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1912 
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CaPKRIGIir DEPOSIT. 



AKT OF READING 




WHEN WRITING THE ESSAYS 



THE ART OF READING 



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BY ^• 

JONATHAN b/fROST 



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BY INVITATION ONLY 
JONATHAN B. FROST 
ATLANTA, GEORGIA 



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COPTRIOHT, 1912 

Bt JONATHAN B. FROST 



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Ahi 13 iiiiiiJ 



CONTENTS 

The Abt of Reading : 3 

As You Like It 13 

Lent ,. . . 21 

Imagination 33 

Some Proverbs and a Psalm ...,.- .. . 47 
The Education oe Jesus ....... 53 

Concerning Conscience 69 

Associations .83 

The Ocklawaha > 89 

Right Thinking .97 

The Sages to the Youth 107 

Justifiable Ahistoceacy 117 



THE ART OF READING 

BEING AN APPENDIX TO EVERYTHING 
WRITTEN ON "THE CHOICE OF BOOKS." 



THE ART OF READING 

"OUBLISHERS' announcements, advertisements, 
■*• reviews and newspaper comments bring before the 
public, and consequently into the hands of novelty- 
seeking readers, the current literature. Its most worth- 
less portions are most read. Fiction seekers seem to 
have no discriminating taste. Why is the slaver and 
incident of a weak writer of to-day preferred to the 
art and thought of a strong writer of yesterday? It 
is not preferred, for in the matter there is no exercise 
of choice. It is more widely read because it is more 
prominently brought before the pubhc. Worthy au- 
thors are well and handsomely bound and orderly placed 
upon shelves, while the unworthy are raggedly afloat 
on the breath of the public. 

It is to be lamented that no happy accident thrusts 
into the hands of neutral readers works of a higher or- 
der of merit and of wholesome charm. Taste is to a 
large degree innate, to some degree acquired. Guard- 
ianship of the mind can influence only the latter. 
Worthless books, though the worthlessness be not rec- 
ognized by the reader, begets carelessness, for they con- 
tahi nothing to stimulate care and study. Our liter- 



4 THE ART OF READING 

ary club read "Romola" for the story, without recogniz- 
ing the philosophy elucidated, for which purpose all 
those characters were portrayed and situations invented. 
We are amused by the shell, but do not crack it for the 
kernel. We read in a week what genius was years in 
writing; tliis we do because we are accustomed to what 
is unworthy of prolonged attention, a thing whose only 
interest lies in a data or a circumstance. 

Let us restrict ourselves to the good; it exists in 
abundance. If we dwell alone with genius we adore 
the literary world, just as when we dwell apart with 
goodness we love humanity. "I wish an author who 
gives me facts," says a gentleman to me. Take him, 
say I; we do not quarrel for possession of the object 
wished while we differ thus in taste, for I will take an 
author who has sweep of imagination and can give me 
thought and can portray emotion, impart a feeling of 
power and beauty, whose ink-pot is his heart and who 
writes in purple. 

A good book is body and soul of its author. Our 
common method of reading is as though we meet him 
on the street — we touch our hat and observe his broad- 
cloth. The proper self -improving method is as though 
we take him home to our parlors, make him our friend, 
enfold him to ourselves and penetrate the depths of his 



THE ART OF READING 5 

nature. A great work possesses the magnetism of its 
author, and, as it tumbles through the world, attracts 
its affinities. Strangers but yesterday, we have dis- 
covered that we are attached to the same author, at- 
tracted by the same work, and recognizing the triple 
affinity, are friends to-day. I love a comprehensive 
lover of my heroes and heroines. An idolater of the 
spirit, I aspire through books, to the souls of the great. 
I care naught for the letter, and if an author does not 
reveal himself, if he does not make me feel that he has 
felt, see that he has seen ; if he arouses no sense of power 
or beauty, if he imparts no enthusiasm, awakens no 
emotions and stimulates no overwhelming thought, I 
pass him by and devote myself to some more worthy 
friend. 

The manner of reading, however, is as important 
as the matter. How? is as pertinent a question as 
What? We have volumes on "The Choice of Books." 
Let this appendix be written on "The Art of Read- 
ing." 

If we look more at the quality of what we read 
than at the quantity, we need not hasten. We may 
gather the flowers and pluck the fruit without bring- 
ing in the thicket and underbrush. We cannot re- 
ceive in a moment what an author has required hours 



6 THE AUT OF READING 

to give. We may devote a day to a page, yet not feel 
nor think half the author thought and felt while writ- 
ing it. Why should we not gain knowledge of his 
whole heart and appropriate the essence of his being? 
If it is not there he is not our author. Freely he has 
given; let us freely receive. We shoxild study the emo- 
tions his words awaken within us, and record the 
thoughts aroused. If nothing comes to mind except 
this skeleton outlined upon paper, his task is Ul per- 
formed. An author must awaken the soul, and a reader 
should not hurry the sensations pell-meU through his 
nature. They are his for the moment, and he should 
make them his forever. 

Let me illustrate. 

A few summers ago I read "Daniel Deronda," by 
George Eliot. I to-day take it from the shelf, and from 
the margin can review all the emotions it first aroused. 
Every worthy thought the book awakened is there as 
a footnote. As I read, the author did not begrudge 
me the time to think. At the close of the hotel scene 
at Genoa, between Gwendolen and Deronda, after 
the death of Grandcourt, are we to hurry on to the next 
chapter with uncontrolled eagerness, dr^Aang out at 
once all the feeling aroused by that powerful and tragic 
climax? The work should not be resumed until after 



THE AKT OF READING 7 

hours of reflection upon the terror and agony of the 
heroine, and until we have held in mental review all 
the past incidents of her life, that we may justly weigh 
this effect of the double thought of her freedom and her 
sin, and until we have from her past predicted what 
must be her future. 

Until this moment I had not for a long time thought 
of this book. The opinions with which it was shelved, 
had, long since, faded out of my mind. Suppose to- 
day I wish to give judgment of the work. Must I to 
a considerable extent re-read it? I must but for the 
fact that I find already written out somewhat carelessly 
on the blank leaves at the close just what opinions I 
held of the story. Thus, by a few moments' effort at 
that time is preserved what to reacquire would consume 
much time, and rob some other author of his due at- 
tention. 

To my thinking, Edgar Allan Poe had the secret of 
literary art, which is to drive straight forward to the 
production of an effect. When that effect is reached, 
there ends the work. The only point I shall give from 
the above-mentioned judgment of "Daniel Deronda" 
is that it is carried beyond its proper terminus. Gwen- 
dolen is the heroine, and when she leaves the scene the 
work is properly ended. We see Mirah in a sort of 



8 THE ART OF READING 

post-graduate course of misery, and misery wrought by 
no fatal errors of her o^vn, but by situations into which 
she is helplessly thrust. We see Gwendolen pass the 
entire and terrible curriculum of the school of experi- 
ence. Within her soul is enacted the tragedy of hurry- 
ing desires and lurking vengeance. We need not fol- 
low out the destiny of Deronda, for he is secondary, as 
the oak is secondary to the clinging vine bears the fruit. 
He is employed for his effect upon Gwendolen, and not 
Gwendolen for her effect upon him. With the viva- 
cious maiden of Offendene the interest begins; with the 
spirit-broken widow of Offendene it culminates. At 
this point the prologue is fulfilled. The effect is pro- 
duced. We arise with a terror of our own soul, and 
fear to entertain a desire lest its bright allurement is 
but the mask of some demons of vengeance. 

What follows only dissipates this effect, and de- 
stroys the whole purpose of the work. If we hurrj^ on 
from the last scene with the heroine to the marriage of 
Mirah and Deronda we throw away the final worth of 
the book. There is left upon the mind and heart abso- 
lutely no effect, for we are immediately dragged doAvn 
from the climax by the later non-essential adjustments. 

Well, the careful reader will not suffer this, but will 
pause at Offendene and there dwell. After finishing 



THE ART OF READING 9 

this scene, I allowed a week to pass before perusing the 
appended chapters, and it were just as well had they 
never been read — ^much better had they never been writ- 
ten. 

A work is not improperly judged by the state of 
feeling in which it leaves us. But in an epic poem, in 
a novel or romance, there will be more than one climax, 
more than one high tide of feeling, more than one ele- 
vated state of mind and heart, howsoever subordinate 
they may be to the final state which is wrought by the 
combined effect of the whole. 

I find also there written after completing the pe- 
rusal of this Hotel scene of Daniel Deronda the follow- 
ing poem, if it may be so styled :— =■ 

IMAGINATION 

Imagination keen though friend is fiend as well. 
It opens gates of heaven but plunges into hell. 
It lures by magic cords o'ercoming all resistance. 
To wishes fancy painted pictures in the distance; 
And on the plain our highest hopes to realize. 
We do the deed that opens castles in the skies ; 
And then we think we've entered heaven's happy spherg 
Till joyous sylph has wiped away our struggling tear. 
And through the crystalhne reflection of her mirror 
Imagination sees all fiendish forms of terror. 



10 THE ART OF READING 

Imagination keen both friend and fiend as well, 

In forms of heaven ushers in the ills of hell. 

While fancy faced as friend with signals caught from 

Aidenn 
With woeful pangs of pallid death comes heavy laden. 
And we taste this sugar-coated gall of vanity. 
Then we see such sights as scare away our sanity, 
For conscience, chief commander of these frightful 

bands. 
Sends remorse with all the imps that he commands, 
Across the agitated brain, and fevered then. 
Imagination casts them in the air again. 

Imagination keen though fiend still friend remains. 
Forcing joy to birth through pangs of bitter pains; 
For in the pallid sleep when mortal sense is lost 
Under fright of fiendish fancy painted ghost. 
There comes a soothing sense of higher spirit life. 
And in the heart a bloom with Aidenn's fragrance rife. 
And then we know the berry from the brier grows. 
And on the sharpest thorn unfolds the fairest rose. 
And whether forming fiend or painting pauline prize. 
Imagination pictures but for fancy's eyes. 



A STUDY OF 
"AS YOU LIKE IT" 

AND 
MODJESKA 

AS OUTLINED IN 

"THE ART OF READING" 



"AS YOU LIKE IT" 

T WAS not well pleased with Modjeska's Rosalind. 
■^ The first dialogue with Celia lacked depth of earnest 
tenderness. In the turn from sad thoughts to gay, 
when Celia pleads, "My sweet Rose, my dear Rose, he 
merry." And Rosalind replies: "From henceforth I 
will, Coz, and devise sports. Let me see: what tliink 
you of falling in love?" there was entirely too great a 
change, a kind of spasm of gay animation, a striking of 
giddy attitudes, and a shrill utterance of jests, wliich 
should have been subdued and placid, as being all the 
way through under the shade of that sorrow from which 
Ceha seeks to cheer her, but whose every trace would 
not naturally disappear so suddenly. Indeed, the ele- 
ment does run through the jests — "Love no man in 
good earnest" (cynic). "Mock the good housewife 
Fortune, her benefits are mightily misplaced." 

There is such a gradual transition from the grief of 
Rosalind to the wrestling scene that at no one point 
should we be conscious of change. 

During the wrestle I saw none of that acting for 
which there is such opportunity in these expressions: 

13 



14 THE ART OF READING 

Celia. I would I were invisible, to catch the strong 
fellow by the leg. 

Itosalind. O, excellent young man! 

Celia. If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can 
tell who should down. 

Soon these two are left together again, and in their 
manner and speech as interpreted by Modjeska is the 
same flaw as before. 

It may be the fault of my taste, but it was offended 
by the intense pettishness in which Modjeska said, "I 
could shake them off my coat; these burs are in my 
heart." Also the expression of "Oh, they take the part 
of a better wrestler than myself," should be spoken with 
a more subdued playfulness. 

In short, Modjeska's Rosalind thus far, and 
through the balance of the first act, when the plans are 
discussed for flight, by her sudden transitions from sor- 
row too explosive in its expression, as if from a spirit 
easilj'^ overcome by calamity, to a superficial expres- 
sion of delight, somewhat suggestive of a giggling gay- 
ety, shows, it seemed to me, a failure to grasp the 
proper key to the interpretation of this drama. It was 
given as though expected to produce merriment by the 
means employed in the ordinary comedy of superficial 
wit. 



AS YOU LIKE IT 15 

We were much better pleased with Modjeska's 
Rosalind in the forest. There was but one oppor- 
tunity for the same fault, and it was not taken advan- 
tage of to such degree. That is where she says she will 
weep because Orlando has broken his vow to visit her. 

But there were other opportunities for interesting 
action which were not improved; such as a manifesta- 
tion of lively and lovely interest in the war of jests twixt 
Jaques and her Orlando. 

Nevertheless my purpose is not so much a criticism 
of Modjeska's Rosalind, as to convey what seems to 
me the true idea of the interpretation of this drama. 

To that end a word on this word-war. There are 
but two points in the drama where the least envy or 
meanness of disposition should at all be shown, and 
those are from Duke Frederick to Rosalind and second- 
arily to Celia, and Charles to Orlando and secondarily 
to Adam. Yet this scene between Orlando and Jaques 
was entirely spoiled by just such an element. Their 
jests should be passed with a humorous, and not to the 
slightest degree with an impatient, envious disposition. 

More we have not to say of this Orlando than that 
he should have been hissed from the stage. It was in 
St. Louis in eighteen eighty -nine that I saw Modjeska 
in this drama and wrote this criticism and I have for- 



16 THE ART OF READING 

gotten who played this Orlando. We can not censure 
Rosalind for a little lack of enthusiasm of love for this 
fellow. To be pleased with the love of this lovely crea- 
ture we must be pleased with the object of her love. 
This we could not be with tliis vulgarly costimied, drawl- 
ing lout. We had presumed that love tends to animate 
the spirits. 

This failure to catch the spirit of the comedy spoiled 
also the character of Touchstone. His voice, at times 
too piping, never had the proper tone for self-conscious 
bombast. He gave too much weight of thought to 
most of his utterances, a defect apparent also in Corin's 
philosopliizing, both of which should be given with the 
rapidity of spontaneous outflow always characteristic 
of witty sophistry. All these defects, along with many 
others of like purport, certainly could have arisen from 
nothing short of a misinterpretation of Shakespeare's 
comedy. 

One defect which furnished a little amusement might 
have arisen from the necessity of phj^sique. That 
lovely little nymph who posed as Audry was no "country 
wench," sufficiently repulsive to be mated with Touch- 
stone, especially with that Touchstone, and rendered 
quite inappropriate his expression, "A poor humor 
of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will," 



AS YOU LIKE IT 17 

why! we all would have chosen her out of that quartet. 

But having ill-favoredly used this Rosalind for a 
counter-illustration of what I consider the secret of in- 
terpretation of this comedy, I will mention one or two 
of Modjeska's excellencies, which, indeed, were many; 
for example, her first glance at Orlando; her re-en- 
trance after the wrestUng scene is over and the object 
of her love has departed; her preoccupation of looking 
in the direction of his going, while Celia talks to her; 
the manner of her address to Phebe, her fainting, and, 
above all, her recovery, which was exquisite as was also 
the epilogue, which well nigh made us wish we had a 
beard, for the chance that it might please her. Your 
pardon, Modjeska! for the chance that it might please 
Rosalind. 

What a world of rich and wholesome interest we get 
out of drama, and a night at the classic theater, when we 
apply this study vmder "The Art of Reading." 



LENT: 

BEING A READING FROM 

THE LITURGY, ON 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN 



LENT 

r I iHE observance of Lent, as a religious ceremony, is 
traceable almost to the beginning of Christianity. 
Indeed, it is properly much older, since it is but a period 
of fasting. 

I judge the real spirit of the institution to be con- 
sciously violated many times to every once that it is con- 
scientiously observed. Coffee instead of chocolate, 
jelly instead of butter, pie instead of plum pudding, 
can not by any parson or person very sincere with him- 
self be practiced as a sacrifice. Lent observed in this 
manner is one of the many things made ludicrous by the 
unscrupulously silly. 

But it is not my purpose to criticise the institution, 
either in its original spirit or in its modern observance. 
I mean only to take the spirit of the institution as sug- 
gestive of a valuable lesson, the importance of which 
will be most appreciated by those who have never 
learned it. 

At any time it is perhaps better, after becoming dis- 
satisfied with an old institution, not to throw it off as a 
thing entirely worthless, but labor to transform it for 
one's self, if not for others, into a serviceable end. We 

31 



22 THE ART OF READING 

must never forget that the past has brought forth the 
present, and that the present contains the germs of 
all future. The arbitrary, theoretic, useless and cere- 
monial old "is the progenitor of what must get itself 
transformed into the practical new. The present good 
has its tap roots in what was good before it." 

It is nothing short of the lesson the Great IMaster, 
sounded through his teachings and which permeated 
his life, the lesson of Renunciation. 

This lesson is capable of use in preparing child- 
hood for the coming catastrophe to its little world and 
all that dwells therein. Indeed, when the human fam- 
ily learns aright, there will come to childhood's little 
world, no catastrophe, but the grown-up world will be 
founded on it. 

I am of opinion that the greatest benefit accruing to 
the child from any moral or intellectual training is 
that which makes him stronger in the former rather 
than wiser in the latter. All the learning with which 
we can pack the little skull may be, much later, gained 
by a few brief glances of the mental eye; but moral 
impressions, good or bad, are not in later years readily 
received. But such impressions as are made in early 
life may govern the whole tenor of man's moral being. 
I maintain it to be our duty to give to coming man the 



LENT 23 

wisdom and strength naturally arising from our experi- 
ence, and since we have attained self -consciousness we 
need not content ourselves with nature's automatic 
methods of moral transmission. The child, however, 
need not now be left to nature's blindness. Parental 
ingenuity may serve a noble end in calling up elements 
of strength which now remain latent, and in developing 
a vigor of submission, a power of resignation, so much 
needed in after years, when ends are not all unattain- 
able, when spasmodic effort ceases and the untrained 
heart goes down into despair. It is from this abyss that 
proper culture might possibly save one. It were to 
gift one with a kind of God-like power to enable him 
to say, "What I can not attain I can renounce." The 
true foundation for this strength is the frequent volun- 
tary renunciation of things we want and can attain. 
There, too, is the great secret of contentment. 

One who has this power is self sufficient. He need 
not be ministered unto; he can minister. He is self- 
poised, possessing one element of the eternal — stability. 
Cursed with every wild, delirious passion, he is con- 
tinent, capable of calling in every desire. Gifted with 
all aspirations, he does not transcend his element, but is 
of steady pace, strong arm and able to take settled and 
deep satisfaction in resigning what he can not reach. 



24 THE ART OF READING 

Surely if this power is latent in man it should be 
called into active efficiency. In no battle is the power 
of retreat more necessary than in the battle of life 
where defeat is so frequent, and where capture by the 
powers of the flesh or avarice or vengeance or ambition 
or vindictive malice, means to be rent asunder or im- 
jjrisoned in darkness. 

"It is not much thought of," said Steele, "but it is 
certainly a very important lesson to learn how to enjoy 
ordinary life, and to be able to rehsh your being with- 
out the transport of some passion or gratification of 
some appetite." 

Without this capacity human life is frail and petu- 
lant, often becoming vicious and raving. But how Lent 
Can be suggestive of any manner of renunciation, and 
far less, how through any such suggestion children are 
to be inspired with any power of submission to abridg- 
ing destiny, is likely incomprehensible to one who ob- 
serves the season by substituting one relish for an- 
other. 

It is my opinion that any performance exacted 
of children will be more readily undertaken if its motive 
is held entirely aloof from what is usually considered 
the religious incentive. For the purpose of which I 
speak the observance of the Lenten season would on 



LENT 25 

the one hand be entirely unnecessary, and on the other 
hand wholly insufficient. An annual application of a 
light force would produce no deep effect, and a forty- 
day fast would be too severe. Lent affords the one 
suggestion of voluntary abstinence. 

From any self-denial there accrues a strength of will 
by which it would gradually becorne dominant over aU 
possible appeals to palate, even in the child. If this 
practice were suggested to children upon reasonable a 
grounds, if they were taught the practice of this re-i 
nunciation plainly for the purpose of cultivating th^ 
power of will and resignation, they would be found tqi 
take to it readily, for in its exercise there is indubitable 
satisfaction. Next to the delight of actual participa- 
tion is the delight of voluntary renouncement, however 
high and vivacious and sweeping the one, and however 
placid, deep and reserved the other. 

Instead of attempting to impress childhood with a 
little of the serious business of life, the attempt is to 
control entirely by extraneous force. Instead of im- 
parting power, we exercise power. We seek to restrain 
by the rod rather than by self-respect and by awaken- 
ing the desire and enjoyable power of self-control. 
So, in fact, life's bitterness to a degree, and of exactly 
the same quality, is inflicted by guardians and parents 



rT:^ 



26 THE ART OF READING 

before one reaches an age at which the draughts of 
destiny are appreciated. What curses does the parent 
produce who declares a purpose to "conquer the child's 
will." Instead of thrusting on the neck of childhood the 
galling yoke of limitation and denial, it should be judi- 
ciously stimulated to self-denial. One of the early les- 
sons should be to voluntarily go without, and under the 
frequent practice the child should be taught that by ex- 
ercise of power he is cultivating within himself the force 
of manhood, and that by whatever he now attains of 
will and renunciation he shall, in future, escape humilia- 
tion, disappointment and distress and procure a foot- 
hold in the path of life forever. Mamma's little man, 
and papa's little woman, would be sure-nufF little men, 
and little women. 

It may readily be supposed that children would 
often wish no knowledge were possessed of delicacies 
they were obliged to forego. But man, too, often la- 
ments that he can not remain ignorant of that which 
dispels whole troops of joy-giving illusions. "Strange 
condition of man," says Balzac; "every one of his en- 
joyments proceeds from his ignorance." There is the 
exact reason for this training of children to frequently 
deny themselves the enjoyment of many simple grati- 
fications. 



LENT 27 

It were a grievous error to suppose I would deny 
children any possible and wholesome delights. I 
would teach them the practice and power of self-re- 
straint. That is the object, and would be of beneficent 
result only because man can not forever hug his delusive 
phantoms. "I wish for my part . . . that we were 
not obliged to deny ourselves anything, and that we had 
no knowledge of those blessings which we are not al- 
lowed to possess." But precisely because life inev- 
itably awakens us out of our sweet and easy dreams is 
it necessary that one have strength for meeting realities, 
and exactly to call up and develop that strength are ap- 
peals made to us on every hand which we must resist. 
I can conceive no other way for an education adapted 
to these exigencies. 

It comes to mind that the German apostle of the 
doctrine of renunciation, Goethe, describes a household 
wherein this principle of education is adopted. I turn 
to the passage and find a fitting conclusion to my 
thought, though I think great improvement could be 
made by training the child to these denials under its own 
choice of time and object, only requiring that it become 
a custom with each to forego possibly a specific number 
of wishes or dishes within a stipulated time. The whole 
idea is to teach the child to restrain itself, rather than 



28 THE ART OF READING 

inflict restraint either by force or fear. In conclusion, 
here is Goethe's paragraph. It is from "Wilhelm 
Meister." 

"I once had an opportunity of witnessing an in- 
stance of the system he adopted. One of his children 
was about to eat something at the table of which he was 
particularly fond. His father forbade it, apparently 
without reason. To my astonishment the child obeyed 
with the utmost cheerfulness, and dinner proceeded as 
if nothing had happened. And in this manner even the 
oldest members of the family often allowed a tempting 
dish of fniit or some other dainty to pass them untasted. 
But, notwithstanding this, a general freedom reigned in 
his house; and there was at times a sufficient display 
both of good and bad conduct. But Ferdinand was for 
the most part indifferent to what occurred, and al- 
lowed an almost unrestrained license. At times, how- 
ever, when a certain week came about, orders were given 
for precise punctuality, the clocks were regulated to 
the second, every member of the family received his 
orders for the day, business and pleasure had their turn, 
and no one dare to be a single second in arrear. . . . 
He said that every man should make a vow to prac- 
tice self-restraint, as well as to require obedience from 



LENT 29 

others ; but he observed that the exercise of these vows, 
in place of being perpetually demanded, was suitable 
only for certain occasions." 



IMAGINATION 

A READING OF OUR FACULTIES AS THE 
BASIS OF OUR DISPOSITIONS 



IMAGINATION 

rr^HERE is (in progress) this night "a musical." It 
is a benefit for this summer sojourn, dedicated to 
an aesthetic purpose, the improvement of this vUlage in 
appearance. 

The Improvement Club indicates a development in 
the artistic taste of our ladies, in advance of the condi- 
tion of our streets and dwellings. Shall the high be- 
come debased to the low, or can the spiritual uplift and 
shape the material to its elevation and form? 

The ladies say that nature is plastic ; that a delicate 
touch will change abrupt to graceful curves; that any 
form they can create in the mind they can mold from 
material; that ugliness is deformed beauty, and that 
the whole earth yields to the magnetism of man. 

This is true. The frontispiece of the book of na- 
ture illustrates to man the lesson of pliability. 
Woman's thought is seconded by the groves and con- 
firmed by her heart. Man is worshiped by nature. 
With a few motions she is transformed to his image, be- 
comes the embodiment of his idea. 

But man is man's worst enemy. Man against man 
is the insurmountable obstacle to each; man unplastic, 

33 



34 THE AKT OF READING 

man not pliable, man stubborn. He is not to be likened 
unto the rock, for that yields gradually away and 
gives up its essence under the song of the winds. He 
is not the glacier; hard, cutting, crushing bulk of ice, 
for that wears its way to the valley of summer and 
yields up its essence to the kissing sun. There is no ob- 
ject of nature whereto man "set in his way," man stub- 
born, bull-headed man, can be likened. He is harsher 
than rock, colder than ice, sharper than nettles, uglier 
than bulls, more ominous than a dungeon, narrower 
than a cell, emptier than a gourd. He is a deformity, 
a two-legged beast who has failed to become man. I 
had rather quarry stone, tread ice, pull nettles, pene- 
trate briars, mow thistles than come into spiritual touch 
with this monstrosity. It is agonizing to meet him, an- 
noying to contemplate him. With a forewarning grunt 
he says "no" to every proposition. The farmer who 
has driven hogs knows him. The dude who has worked 
the pig puzzle understands him. The belles who at- 
tempt village improvement find him out. The weeds 
overhanging the sidewalk do not trouble him. Will it 
trouble him then if they are cut away? Yes, if his 
neighbors wish it done. He has no opinion till he knows 
what the other man wants. Then he knows he does not 
want it. But will he allow it to others? 



IMAGINATION 35 

"No." 

Why? Then comes the foreboding grunt under 
which the sharp ear can catch the half articulation of 
"well," uttered with the rising inflection. Will it pro- 
duce harm to any one or inconvenience to you? Then 
comes a "no," which afiirms that anyway his first word 
must prevail. WiU it not result in such a benefit to 
such people and be a general good to all? 

"Yes; but— ^" 

But what? But nothing except the inherent stub- 
bornness of the man. 

Stubbornness in man is what the thorn is on the tree, 
a miscarried limb. The latter, properly developed, 
would have been a graceful, bending, fruit-laden 
branch; normally developed, the former would have been 
plastic stability of character, at once firm and pliable 
as the tall hickory — the affable, the courteous, 
the genial, the sympathetic, the gentlemanly, the good, 
kind, generous, combined with the firm, resolute, de- 
termined. Stubbornness is the abnormal growth of 
firmness in a little soul. I have met men who seem to 
fear being thought ridiculous by being too accommodat- 
ing. The true man would choose to doff his coat and 
black his companion's boots on the street rather than fear 
doing too much for a friend. There are also men who 



36 THE ART OF READING 

fear to yield a wrong opinion, or to desist from a bad 
course lest it be said they have no mind of their own. 
Slaves to a small pride! If they possessed "minds of 
their own" they would be strong enough to yield. They 
have the moral fear of the boy who did a wrong act 
rather than be called "coward." Honor to the man who 
is grea' enough to bear epithets from the little. 

The ladies of the iEsthetie Club found the pride of 
the small. WUl the occupants of No. 29 permit shade 
trees in the street before their property? "No, we are 
not paupers, and will plant when we like for ourselves." 
But we, the ladies aesthetic, have purchased at whole- 
sale a supply of trees we present to the city, which ac- 
cepts them and appoints us the committee on distribu- 
tion, and on survey of this street we find space for three 
before your lots. "You need send no workman here. 
We will care for our own street; we are indignant that 
you should assume to improve us; henceforth be there 
antipathy betwixt us." 

The occupants of No. 29 are people with such pride 
as fears to acknowledge its inability to buy to itself all 
luxury. The man of perception knows that more than 
for anything else the ladies do this for their own satis- 
faction. He sees here, in woman, a taste that demands 
food. The artistic sense must be pleased. It seeks to 



IMAGINATION 37 

harmonize and create. Assuredly, give it scope; plant 
trees, move sheds, mow grass, elevate my ways. Every 
suggestion the ladies make is considered of interest, and 
there is a readiness to assist in effecting any change they 
think will enhance and improve. There is no higher 
pleasure to them than serving, nothing more agreeable 
to him than being served. Some changes in the lawn 
are contemplated, and this aesthetic committee's advice 
is solicited. The man means to repair the house. This 
for economic reasons he will do himself. His first ob- 
ject is utility, protection of the timber. Paint costs 
money. Buttermilk and lime must do. Yes, the ladies 
have observed the cottage needs painting. But let us 
send a painter. We have feared to offer it, but you 
make us bold. Then, says the man, I am skillful vdth 
the brush and know the art of mixing; your material I 
accept if you will superintend the work and suggest 
the colors. All parties are delighted. The Improve- 
ment Club recognizes the boon of an opportunity. The 
ladies wish to give; they furnish trees and scythe, and 
paints and taste. The man is man, delights to give 
also, and gives all he has — the privilege. The club re- 
members him, and he remembers the ladies. All were 
genuine, and needed no whitewash. They knew hence- 
forth that he was a man and poor; he henceforth knew 



38 THE ART OF READING 

they were women and wealthy. Art made them friends. 
They were united in a common desire for beauty. 
They were harmonious in seeking the harmony of forms 
and colors. There was no little pride because there 
was no small heart. There was no stubborn will be- 
cause there was a developed mind. They met, this man 
and these ladies, upon the broad ground of Imagina- 
tion. 

But the stubborn man exists elsewhere than at No. 
29, and does more than thwart ladies in their aesthetic 
pursuits. He is universal obstructionist. 

He by accompli sloment becomes better named. In 
pohtics he is "tjTanny" or "anarchy," which arise from 
similar deformities and equally annul government. In 
philosophy he is "materialist," abnormal faculty for 
perceiving substance, no perception of essence. In 
poetry he is "didactic," in commerce "mercenary," in 
theology "atheist," everywhere the "iconoclast." He is 
the National Liberal League, he is Bradlaugh and the 
truth seeker, he is Gould, and "the striker," he is the 
Clan-na-Gael, organized obstinacy, concentrated prej- 
udice. 

Yet he becomes a degree lucid and assumes higher 
forms. In revolution he is will intoxicated with lib- 



IMAGINATION 39 

erty, in the inquisitor he is will stupefied by superstition. 

Under the best development he is will and intellect. 
He is logic and force. In politics the partisan, in re- 
ligion the bigot. 

This man is without perspective, a consequent victim 
of a delusion by which small things appear large be- 
cause they are near, and large things small because 
they are distant. He reverses the methods and mis- 
applies the implements of science. Earth he views 
through the telescope, and through the microscope, 
heaven. He solves the problem of his origin and gloats 
over his affinity with the clod. What can be handled is 
important, what eludes the grasp is worthless. He is 
an exaggeration of the five senses. Of clay he can 
make bricks; he can not utilize the star. He is repre- 
sented by the herdsman who, contemplating Niagara, 
said : "What a fine place to wash sheep !" He is "mat- 
ter of fact," too "realistic" to appreciate grandeur, too 
"practical" to understand the poetic, too wise for faith 
and too shrewd to hope. He can not be duped by 
priestcraft, nor by nature. He lacks power to see ex- 
cept through the eye that never rolls in "fine frenzy." 
He wonders that people are so "visionary" as to ad- 
mire Shakespeare. He sees nothing in Shelley and only 
baseness in Byron. 



40 THE ART OF READING 

He is inspired by the verse that nvimbers the days 
of the months. He has business penetration, he has 
logical sequence, he has resolution and "drive," he has 
system, and tact, and skill, and perseverance, and en- 
durance ; he has sturdiness and hardihood ; being tough, 
sinewy and strong. His morals are severe and straight. 
He never swerves from the narrow way. He is honest 
to the cent. He will neither take nor give. He is a 
good man, in the sense of being true and virtuous ; not 
in the sense of being kind and generous — for he is im- 
placable. 

He aiFects to be without affectation. He is, how- 
ever, with aU his highest qualifications, not an agreeable 
nor an aflfable nor an entertaining companion. He is 
too clear-cut and precise. Withal he is stubborn. His 
opinion must be granted. His wish must be fulfiUed. 
He can realize no presence but his own. He is, in fact, 
only the two-thirds of a man, will and intellect. And 
what he lacks is what makes man buoyant and plastic 
and lucid and hopeful, for he is without Imagination. 

A man of high order of intellect and strong will- 
power with suppressed imagination becomes atheist, 
materialist, or possibly agnostic. I include the agnostic 
because the strongest argument against his theology is 
that man may possess stultified faculties. That the 



IMAGINATION 41 

blind can not see, is no reason upon which to dispute 
sight. That the deaf can not hear, is no reason upon 
which to deny sound. 

After the five senses fade away, the external appeals 
stiU exist — a material argument with which to defeat 
the materialist, — and we retire to the Internal and rest 
in loftiest repose. I believe poetry, I believe spiritu- 
ality, I believe hope and buoyancy and faith. I believe 
Buddha and Jesus and Homer and Dante. I believe 
friendship and sacrifice, and devotion and worship. I 
beheve sympathy and beauty and thought. I believe 
eternity, infinitude and immortality. I believe the 
surgings of the spirit, the waves of the sea of the soul, 
the tides of aspiration in answer to the attractions of 
heaven. I believe earth and sky, sunshine and air, and 
the life they create. I believe the mountain and the 
plain, the water and the wind, smoke and fire, and hail, 
and the grandeur, placidity, fear and inspiration they 
arouse, for I believe in Trusts— and in Love — and in 
God. 

This is the creed of a man with imagination. It 
answers the materialist because his ground for disput- 
ing it is lack of imagination. It answers the man of 
"creed" by overbelieving him. The man of imagina- 
tion can not assent to the small in such a way as implies 



42 THE ART OF READING 

that he disbelieves the large. He is not definite, to the 
exclusion of the indefinite. There are no scriptures he 
disbelieves, and no revelations he rejects. He can sign 
no formulated "article of faith" because it can not be 
all-inclusive, and he believes — everything. He does not 
care to give a bond for his right to religion, nor to pla- 
card his faith. He has it from God, the all-giver, and 
he is man, the all-believer. 

To be, for clearness, a little more specific, I wiU take 
"The Truth-Seeker" and its methods of thought as 
fairly representative of the man without imagination. 

Its premise is intellect. It accepts reason as a 
faculty of man. Reason is man, the one thing certain, 
fixed and indubitable. From this premise, namely, 
"intellect is the sum total of man," its inferences are 
perfectly logical. They are always precise, and, there- 
fore, limited. It proceeds by reason along one line of 
thought, the intellectual. What can be discovered by 
the faculty of reason from this one premise, from this 
one-third of man, it discovers. But why not grant the 
existence of imagination also as a faculty of man? Its 
existence is as well attested as the existence of intellect ; 
its creations are as real and reliable as the inferences of 
reason. Man pictures as surely as he thinks. Assum- 
ing intellect as the only premise, all conclusions can be 



IMAGINATION 43 

grasped. Nothing can be reached which defies compre- 
hension. But, accept the imagination as just as truly 
a part of mind, proceed from that and you are at once 
out into the lucid, up into the poetic ; you reach the un- 
limited, the indefinite, the expansive, and the end you 
can not attain, the scope you can not encompass, the 
truth you can not express, for you are floating out into 
the infinite, and are in the regions of wonder and wor- 
ship and of the soul and God. You have now with 
imagination as premise just what you can never have 
with the premise of intellect only. Your philosophy is 
annulled by what has been and by what is. 'Tis use- 
less to deny poetry when the Muse has been for years 
singing and still sings. 'Tis useless to deny imagina- 
tion, since it has strewn the path of man with beauty 
and still creates. Shall the crow convince the night- 
ingale there is no song? Or the grub prove to the 
eagle there is no flight. Then may the materialist re- 
fute history. Tell Dante there is no darkness, tell Poe 
there is no terrible, and Swedenborg there is no mys- 
terious, tell Homer there is no heroism and Beethoven 
there is no music, tell Milton there is no grandeur, the 
sea there is no billow and the wave there is no rhythm; 
tell iEschylus there is no tragedy, Isaiah there is no 
prophecy, Goethe there is no emotion, the sun there is 



44 THE ART OF READING 

no light, and the rose there is no beauty; tell the forest 
there is no verdure, and youth there is no love; tell the 
sky there is no blue and woman there is no fidelity; tell 
the east there was never a rainbow and motherhood 
there is no hope ; tell heaven there is no arch, and you 
may teU Shakespeare there is no Imagination, Jesus 
there is no God, and Man there is no religion. 



SOME PROVERBS AND A PSALM: 
A READING FROM THE SCRIPTURES 



SOME PROVERBS AND A PSALM 

T STILL wear an impression made when I was a 
child, by the simple word of my aged grandmother, 
who, upon humming through an old familiar tune, 
closed her song with a sigh. 

"How can it be that you sigh? You certainly were 
happy when you sang?" 

"No, the sweetest songs are sung by saddest hearts. 
Music is often poetic weeping." 

I held the dUenmia in youthful cogitation, and have 
only now come to appreciate the proverb that, 

"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness 
of the countenance is the heart made better." 

It is by a superficial view that people are misled 
into an overestimate of the pleasure of others. We 
see only the clothing of a man. We know only his good 
times. Happy moments are but gleams of sunshine 
through thick clouded skies. Joy is a solitary gleam 
through the weeping heavens, one star-flash from the 
vast night of sadness. There is boundless depth in our 
nature, not sounded by the plummet of pleasure. 

"The heart of fools is in the house of mirth, but the 
heart of the wise is in the house of mourning." 

47 



48 THE ART OF READING 

There is, however, a consideration of charity for the 
fool. It is not by choice that we mourn with those that 
mourn. Had we not been pressed by the hard pressure 
of life's struggle we had not been on the verge of the 
eternal stream. "The wiUow stands at the water's edge 
not from choice, but for sanctuary, driven there by com- 
petition." 

We are in essence, pretty much one, so that what we 
seem and what we receive, depends not so much on what 
we are, as where we are in the great social fabric. Old 
Agur knew this even thousands of years ago, and cried 
unto his god, 

"Give me neither poverty nor riches, . . . lest 
I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord? 
— Lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my 
God in vain." 

It is weU to ponder this thought, and recalling the 
many narrow turns our Hfe-road has taken, remember- 
ing the influences of surroundings in all that we have 
chosen, not forgetting the bondage of heredity nor the 
accidents of fate, nor the destiny of fools on this earth 
where "God turneth man to destruction," tremble and 
know 

"It is better to go to the house of mourning than to 
the house of feasting." 



SOME PROVERBS AND A PSALM 49 

Fortune is ill. Fate is adverse. Calamity comes, 
yet we should not grow petulant towards the implacable 
powers. We should become incapable of lament. The 
great give calamity an indifferent reception. They 
await good fortune, but hate such ill favor as to be al- 
ways successful. Occasional defeat in the battle of life 
is the greatest prize won. It presses us into the king- 
dom of God. Heaven recognizes belligerents in every 
warfare. The richest dowry to youth is all the defeat 
bearable. Irrigation is required to blossom the soul into 
divine life. A defeated Dante pictured — an invalid 
Pope wrote,' — a blind Milton sang, — the rhythm of 
Burns burst the bonds of toil, — Poe's heart was black 
with tragic woe, — Baptisma Agio Pneumatos. Baptism 
of the Holy Ghost is The Baptism of Tears. 

There is no blessing greater than an apparent curse. 
No fortune better than misfortune. Great is the grace 
of God in endowing us with that spirit improvable by 
our blunders. Excitant of undying trust is that di- 
vinity whose retributive visitations are invariably from 
beneath scourging us to higher life, nay; the heart of 
man has created no picture of any ascension, except 
through a cloud. 

"Why art thou bowed down, my soul? 
And why art thou disquieted within me? 



50 THE ART OF READING 

Hope thou in God ; for I shall yet praise him, 
For the health of his countenance." 

WITNESS 

Samson. When we conquer the lion of adver- 
sity we may turn aside to find honey in the carcass. 

Jacob, If our pillow be made of stones, our 
youthful dream will be of angels, and when the day 
breaketh on manhood's night of sorrow, we shall see, if 
our strength endures, that we have wrestled a blessing 
from God. 

Job. The solution of the whole problem of evil, 
— calamity is powerless to touch the righteous heart; 
it stands the storm, it buffets hell. It is adamant to 
conditions. Its mantle is the elements. It companion- 
ships with God, its latter end is more blessed than its be- 
ginning. 



THE "EDUCATION" OF JESUS 

A MORE EXTENSIVE READING FROM THE 
SCRIPTURES 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 

C^T T OW knoweth this man things written, having 

■*" ■■■ never learned?" Thus asked the Jews con- 
cerning Jesus. Thus eighteen centuries later we repeat 
the question. 

The gramma or things written of the Hebrews were 
the Old Testament manuscripts, and later the Talmud 
of traditions and commentaries, being a work of the 
bulk of a complete cyclopedia. 

Learning, vnth the Hebrews, consisted in a knowl- 
edge of the Old Testament with ability to interpret, or 
translate; for in the time of Jesus the Hebrew tongue 
in which the things were written, was a dead language. 

You will readily see with how indefinite an answer 
we must content ourselves, when you are aware that 
scholars yet contend about the language of Jesus, as to 
whether it was that of the common people of his coun- 
try, the Aramaac, or the diplomatic language of the 
time, which was Greek. 

Indeed, we have no direct information concerning 
the education of Jesus. We are told nothing of its 
source, its extent, nor its profundity. No contempo- 
rary historian makes more than mere mention of the 

S3 



54 THE ART OF READING 

man. No reliable or unreliable tradition bears very 
directly upon his learning. Luke alone (11-52) men- 
tions it in a very indefinite clause at the close of the 
story of the youthful disputant of the Temple Doc- 
tors: — ^"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, 
and in favor with God and man." 

But indirectly, by a study of the social customs of 
his time and country, through our knowledge of the 
Hebrew schools of that period, and from the discourses 
of Jesus himself, we are enabled to discover the source 
of his information, measure the breadth of his learning, 
and to sound, in some instances, the depth of his wis- 
dom. Let us put ourselves for a brief time to that 
task. 

The learning pursued by the Hebrews, however, 
was exclusively theological. Their things written were 
of matters pertaining to religion and the religious life 
of their people. There entered into their study, neither 
science nor art, nor literature except religious; so that 
whatever we may conclude about the knowledge of 
Jesus, this is certain, that his instruction was alone in 
the Law and in theology. 

The varied thought of the Hebrews at this time di- 
vided their learned men into three parties. These were 
the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes. They were divided 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 55 

by vital differences of doctrine, though united upon 
the one point of the source and sacredness of the Mosaic 
Law. To this Law in its primal simplicity the Saddu- 
cees strictly adhered. They rejected tradition and 
were protestant against what Matthew Arnold has 
called the Aberglaube, the overbelief, of the great 
Catholic body of Pharisees. The Sadducees were as 
though they would accept the written record as the 
basis of their religious life, while the Pharisees had their 
divine doctors and infallible interpretation. Differ- 
ences enough there were for warm and protracted dis- 
cussions. The ablest expounders of each system ap- 
pealed to all to accept their burden of doctrine, and talie 
upon themselves their yoke, the symbol of their school. 
So Jesus adopting the appeal of the time said: "Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and 
lonely in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." As is 
generally the case in theological controversies there was 
much bigotry on both sides. So as general also, there 
was malice and insolence, hatred, envy and the con- 
stant hurling into one another's teeth their sharpest , 
taunts and most effective weapons of debate. The rela- 
tive standpoint of these two schools, as well as the heat 
to which their discussions rose, is well represented in 



56 THE ART OF READING 

this traditional incident: — "When a certain Rabbi 
Eliezer, being worsted in argument, cried out, 'If I anx 
right, let heaven pronounce in my favor.' There was 
heard a Bath-kol or voice from the skies, saying, 'Do 
you venture to dispute with Rabbi Ehezer, who is an 
authority on all religious qestions?' But Rabbi 
Joshua arose and said 'Our law is not in heaven, but in 
the book which dates from Sinai.' " Thus we have the 
relative position of Pharisee and Sadducee, or Catholic 
and Protestant. 

The Essenes were a sect of consistent believers who 
sought to practice the teachings of the Law. In order 
to have no contact with idolaters, apostates and Gen- 
tiles, they stood aloof from society, withdrew to the 
wilderness where John held his ministry, subsisted, like 
him, upon such fare as the wilderness afforded and 
were clothed as he was clothed. They practiced the 
letter of the Law. They were unconcerned about the 
morrow. God fed the sparrow and clothed the lilies, 
he would feed and clothe them. A convert to their 
creed kept all of the commandments, and did one thing 
more, sold his goods, gave to the poor, and sought the 
Essene community. 

We can determine whether or not Jesus is indebted 
to any of these Hebrew schools for his knowledge and 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 57 

morals, only by a comparison of his methods and pre- 
cepts with theirs. By this method we are very soon 
convinced that he could not have derived much from the 
Rabbinical Schools. The question, "How knoweth this 
man learning, having never learned?" is sufficient indi- 
cation that he was never under any of the masters. 
Furthermore, Jesus taught a pure spiritualism, the 
Pharisees a proud legalism. He was humble, they were 
haughty. Both these and the Sadducees taught and 
practiced an empty formalism of which Jesus knows 
no trait. From the morals of these schools, Austin 
Bierbower demonstrates that Jesus made a seven-fold 
departm^e; — from ceremonies to practical virtues — ■ 
from sacramentarianism to common sense — from trivial 
distinction to real differences — from circumstantials to 
substantials, from tradition to experiences — from ex- 
clusiveness to charity, from proselytism to fraterniza- 
tion. Jesus might have learned from them what to 
avoid and condemn, but not what to teach and practice. 
Nor could he have gained much from the phi- 
losophers of Greece and Rome. The loyal Jews hated 
all foreign culture, and like the haters of innovation 
generally, knew very little of it. And though Jesus 
was not one of that type, he followed the traditions of 
his people, and indeed, living a retired life at Nazareth, 



58 THE ART OF READING 

had no opportunity to do otherwise. His language, — 
his style both of thought and expression, show no traces 
of Greek learning or refinement. His figures of speech, 
his parables and allusions are always from Hebrew his- 
tory and the common events of Jewish hfe. He has no 
allusion to the literature, philosophy, or history of 
Greece or Rome. His daily labors in the insignificant 
and illiterate village of Nazareth would afford but 
slight opportunity for mental culture of any sort. That 
the village was on the commercial route between the 
powerful West and the rich East may have afforded 
him slight contact with the tradesmen and the travelers 
of the two worlds, but with no other apparent effect 
than possibly to stimulate his cosmopolitan spirit. 

Because of the shadow of doubt thrown over the very 
existence of any such sect as described under the name 
of Essenes, there can be but little reliance placed upon 
any conclusion regarding them. Such traditions as we 
have of their doctrines and customs bear such a marked 
resemblance to those of Jesus that DeQuincey, the Eng- 
lish Essayist, thought he fairly demonstrated the sect 
of that name to have been a sect of early Christians, 
originating out of the teachings of Jesus, instead 
of an earlier order influencing the life and teach- 
ings of Jesus. If the Essenes were not a Christian 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 59 

sect, the conditions surely compel the conclusion that 
Jesus gained much from them. They were communis- 
tic, and good doers. They, just as Jesus, made circuits 
of the country for the purpose of teaching. They went 
clad and pursed, as he instructed his apostles to go. 
Jesus broke with their asceticism and isolation. He was 
social and tolerant. They sought the moral result by 
external restraint, he by purity of heart and right de- 
sire. 

We are not to presume that Jesus was educated in 
a community of the Essenes, nor that he was even under 
the set and protracted instruction of any of the Essenic 
Doctors. His receptive spirit, we may safely say, be- 
came imbued with Essenic ideas afloat among the 
people. If there were a pre-christian sect answering 
the description, there is no reasonable doubt that John 
the Baptist was a successful teacher of the Order. In 
that case, baptism by John could signify nothing less 
than admission to the sect; and the tradition of the 
forty days in the wilderness, in that case, may have 
arisen from a short sojourn of Jesus in their midst. Cer- 
tain it is that the fire of his heart was set ablaze by the 
fierce denunciations of this wild, deep, rugged man of 
the desert. Much of the essence of his speech, did he 
catch. "O Generation of vipers, who hath warned you 



60 THE ART OF READING 

to flee from the wrath to come?" said John while Jesus 
was in the audience ; and hke an echo in the later months 
comes his voice, "Fill ye up, the measures of your fathers, 
ye serpents, ye generation of vipers." "How shall ye es- 
cape the damnation of hell?" — "The ax is laid unto the 
root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth 
not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire," 
says John; and Jesus says, "Ye shall know them by their 
fruits. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit 
is hewn down and cast into the fire." 

John warns the people to bring forth fruits meet for 
repentance, and think not to justify themselves by the 
thought that they are the chosen, and by good works of 
their ancestors ; and Jesus warns them that the kingdom 
of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation 
bringing forth the fruits thereof. In John we have the 
voice of one crying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
The Essenes and Jesus taught charity, humility and 
contentment, disregarded worldly affairs, and while the 
former were communistic, the effect of the teachings 
of Jesus was to render his immediate disciples com- 
munistic. Out of all this we infer no greater connection 
of Jesus with the Essenes than a similarity of doctrine 
and spirit would indicate. 

But to leave this shadowy realm of doubt, we may 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 61 

positively assert that Jesus learned the Law and the 
Prophets from Mary and Joseph. The notices of Mary 
in the gospels, especially the Magnificat, show her to 
possess a remarkable knowledge of the Old Testament, 
to be a woman of deep devotion and religious zeal. 
Jesus was not the first nor the last genius supposed to 
be indebted to the mother for superior faculties. We 
know from history that the scrupulous Israelite was in 
nothing more scrupulous than in teaching his children 
the law. This home training was increased at the 
school of the Synagogue, wliich schools "Do not take 
a boy to be taught till he is six years old ; but from that 
time receive him and train him as you do an ox that day 
by day bears a heavier load." This training was so thor- 
ough that, says one of the Rabbis, "If you ask a Jew 
anything concerning the law, he can more readily explain 
than tell you his name." And here Jesus evidently 
learned well his lesson, so well that when the great event 
of a Jewish lad's life came, when at the age of twelve, 
he went up wide-eyed with wonder to the great city of 
Jerusalem, whose streets were lined with pilgrims, whose 
air was fiUed with the sounds of devotion to the nation's 
God, so well had he learned his lesson of the Law and 
Prophets that at this early age his questions puzzled 
the doctors of the Temple. 



62 THE ART OF READING 

Jesus thus became acquainted, like every Jewish 
chUd, with the morals and religion of the Old Testa- 
ment. But these were not his morals and religion. 
The Law he was taught did not contain his code. It 
could not directly have developed his spirit. Re- 
hearsal of "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth" would not 
teach one to forgive one's enemies and do good to them 
that hate one. The moral and spiritual disposition of 
Jesus was the great heritage from a line of devout an- 
cestors. In the one individual we see the result of 
years of conscientious devotion to right and to God. 
We have faint glimmers of the higher life in the Old 
Testament ; as in the prediction of the meek and humble 
by the second Isaiah. As in Micah's, "What doth the 
Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God?" — and as in the ap- 
peal of Malachi, "Have we not all one Father? Hath 
not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously 
every man against his brother by profaning the cove- 
nant of our father?" 

However, fully four hundred years had passed since 
the last of the Old Testament record was compsed, 
when the career of Jesus opened. Aie we to presmne 
that the germ of the higher thought thus early sprouted 
in the hearts of the prophets was violently plucked out 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 63 

by the roots and cast away to wither? Or are we not 
to accept the historical indications that this stretch of 
centuries between the two Testaments was, like every 
other period, a period of development. Time enough 
it was for the development of the doctrines of heaven 
and hell, of "grace" "atonement," Satan as the ad- 
versary of man, and the kingdom of God. Time 
enough also was it for a considerable advance in the 
moral and religious life, and the implications of the 
occasional utterances of the old prophets were, in the 
time of Jesus, the essence of the familiar proverbs of the 
people. For an example or two : — the wisdom of Jesus, 
son of Sirarch was quite famiHar. Concerning prayer, 
it was the manner of the Hebrews, but the matter of 
the prayers of the Gentiles, to which Jesus objected. 
"Our Father who art in heaven proclaim the unity of 
thy name and establish thy kingdom perpetually." — 
"Let us not fall into the power of sin, transgression or 
iniquity, and lead us not into temptation.". — "Thine O, 
Lord, is the greatness, the power and the majesty."—-^ 
"Do whatsoever seemeth good in thy sight; give me, 
only, bread to eat and raiment to wear."— "Our Father 
who art in heaven, thy wiU be done on high." Such 
were the prayers that Jesus must have heard thousands 
of times, the daily prayers uttered in the synagogues. 



64 THE ART OF READING 

Utterances of the old prophets were, in the time of 
Jesus, the essence of the famiUar proverbs of the people. 
For an example or two: — It was well kno^vn that the 
Rabbi Hillel had just taught that for a noble purpose 
the Sabbath might be desecrated; that he had said, 
"Whatever is displeasing unto thee, do not do to others." 
And to the objection urged against an action, that it 
was in violation of holy writ, he had replied, "It may 
be, but if we cling to the letter aU morahty will be lost. 
Whether anything be written or not, the hfe decides." 
Singular enough doth it seem that the inculcators of 
moral life have to-day that same old war to wage. 

After Hillel had apparently won the victory, Jesus 
fell a victim. If we agree with the jealous Hebrew, 
Geiger, that "Jesus was a Pharisee who followed in the 
steps of Hillel," we must contend that he ran beyond 
Hillel's stopping point for many, many leagues. Yet 
so similar are some of the precepts of Jesus to those of 
the earlier Rabbi, that even Renan, the French biog- 
rapher of Jesus, is impelled to say that Hillel will never 
be regarded as the true founder of Christianity. Yet 
it is the judgment of Renan that "Jesus mostly followed 
Hillel in his teaching. Hillel had fifty years before ut- 
tered aphorisms which bore a great similarity to his own. 
In consequence of his patience under poverty, the meek- 



THE EDUCATION OF JESUS 65 

ness of his character, his opposition to priests and hyp- 
ocrites, Hillel was, properly speaking, the real teacher 
of Jesus, if the name teacher may be mentioned at aU, 
where the subject is one of such divine originaHty." 

Jesus in his human career was the pupil of Israel. 
He was the disciple of his nation. He was taught by 
the life of his race. He attended the school of no mas- 
ter but imbibed the thought of all. He was a whole 
soul, disfigured by the mental regaha of no sect. He 
absorbed the rays of every satellite of the Temple. He 
was that type of genius which seems to be the incarnate 
wisdom of its age. The derived conclusions of the 
learned were to him intuitive. His heart was the smelt- 
ing furnace of the ore of the time, and preserved the 
drops of pure gold. With a single sweep of his won- 
derful glance over the social and religious attainments 
of his people, past and present, their wisdom was gath- 
ered into his soul. His was the greatness of range and 
extent ; his heart was receptive, his moral intuition keen, 
his utterance concise, his spirit brave, his manner modest 
and forcible, and what all had separately said before 
came from him, an astounding whole. His mother's di- 
vinity deepened his devotion. The words of the masters 
in the Synagogue, of the doctors in the temple, of the 
Pharisees in the streets, touched his nature to vibrations 



66 THE ART OF READING 

of harmony and of discord. The precepts of the Es- 
senes, the proverbs of the prophets, the aphorisms of the 
Rabbis, the scattered wisdom of the nation gravitated to 
his heart, and by the inspiration of the voice of John 
and the chants of the enthusiastic multitude, his soul 
was lifted on high whence he knew without having 
learned and spoke without assigning authority. 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 
A READING FROM THE LIFE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 

T HAVE recently been meditatively reading of the 
"^ ministry of shaggy John of the Wilderness, and 
having been, more than usual, impressed with the rough 
heroism of his vigorous denunciations I was moved to 
shed a tear upon his tomb. I turned to the incident 
of his death and was there impressed by a fact to which, 
in the haste of previous readings, I had been blind. 

Tetrarch Herod was celebrating his birthday in all 
the glee afforded by glad companions, luxuriant dishes 
and old wine, when a beautiful, bewitching damsel en- 
tered, and with her graceful dancing so delighted her 
step-father that, under the influence of this quadruple 
intoxication, he cried out impulsively: "Whatsoever 
thou wilt ask of me I will give thee, unto the half of 
my kingdom." 

In a twinkling the maid was away to her mother, 
"What shall I ask?" With the bitter memory of in- 
jured dignity the mother seized the opportunity and an- 
swered with the outburst of eager vengeance, 

"The head of John the Baptist." 

Some time before this, Herod himself had sent 

69 



70 THE ART OF READING 

forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison 
for Herodias' sake, his brother Phillip's wife, for he had 
said unto Herod, 

"It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife!" 

Just so. As John was "A just man and a holy" he 
was thenceforth a living rebuke to this living sin, and 
for the woman's safety and ease of conscience, better 
than to have half a kingdom were it to have him dead. 
As peace of mind is to be preferred above great riches, 
so was the head of John to be chosen above the scepter. 
Very often does the only rebuke for our deeds exist in 
the judgments of others. Among our severest penalties 
is the suspected censure of a silent friend. Since con- 
science is considered, by some, the outcome of communal 
opinion it is not possible to conceive a greater torture 
than would result from the public unveiling of our 
secret souls. Those who leaned upon our strength now 
see they were as well to rest upon a dream; those who 
trusted us now turn away and weep; exulting emy 
laughs, and not without a cause, since fondest friends 
and closely bound companions blush with shame and 
seek to purge away some vile contamination caught from 
us, for friends there be not many who to one another 
say: 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 71 

"I have unclasp'd 
To thee the book even of my secret soul." 

Humility more sad could not be eaten from the dust, nor 
could fiercer regret be kindled in the heart, the soul more 
sickened with remorse than thus by thrusting naked 
conscience helpless under play of pity, shame and scorn, 
of haughty pride and fierce derision, infamy and flam- 
ing trust and broken faith, of all the painful parent 
forces of the moral sense ; where others see us as we see 
ourselves, and we realize how little we have known, how 
less been known. The thought of such a final state is 
hell to any living soul, and were the doctrine made con- 
viction in the heart, it would drive we human creatures 
mad. May heaven save us, in her mercies, from a sphere 
where mental eyes may penetrate the deepest secrets of 
companion hearts, or rather, 

"Lord, cleanse thou me from secret sins." 

This, then, is a fact concerning conscience, that a 
great number of its rebukes are not innate, but come 
either from the expressed or our imagined judgment of 
others. It were better to elevate oneself accordingly 
than to debase that judgment. If we are ill at ease 
under any such censure, much wiser is it to outlive its 
further application to us than to gain temporary peace 



72 THE ART OF READING 

by avoiding this objective conscience, for certain as there 
is enduring reality of mind or soul we must at last en- 
dure all condemnation. 

But while Herodias freed herself from the immediate 
torment of her objective conscience, let us observe fur- 
ther what befalls Herod. 

The girl returns from her mother and modestly 
makes her request, "I will that thou give me, by and by, 
in a charger the head of John the Baptist." And here 
is the fact that particularly arrested my attention — 

"And the king was sorry." 

Nevertheless, the head was severed from his mighty, 
heaving heart by the velvety pats of a tender damsel's 
light fantastic toe. I little thought in coming to the 
tomb of John that I should find his executioner in 
mourning. "And the king was sorry." I had before 
noted the hilarious conditions under which the vow was 
made and John beheaded, but I now, for the first time, 
followed this sorry king that night into the seclusion of 
his private apartments. 

He withdrew from the company with sadness on 
his brow and self-condemnation in his thought. The 
din of revelry died away as he gloomily passed through 
the corridors, and now alone and in silence he sits, — 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 73 

while the wine-provoked laughter has passed its full 
stage into the withered smile of regret, while the superfi- 
cial impressions wrought by the charm of the dancing 
damsel fade out of the mind and confused images of the 
night's carnival drop by groups from his vision until 
alone remains a solitary scene — the head of John in the 
charger, as it was swung before liim to the hands of her 
whose charm it rewarded. That remains with all the 
vividness of its original impression, and will still swing 
on forever, innumerable heads of John passing from 
hand of executioner to hand of maiden, the object of 
his night dreams and day reveries; the ghost of his 
memory. 

I bethink me now of a mention of John, many days 
afterwards, by this sorry king. Rumors of the preach- 
ing of Jesus came to the ear of Herod. Some said, "It 
is Elias, and others said that it is a prophet." "But 
no," says the king, with that rash jump of conclusion 
characteristic of an affrighted and afflicted soul, "it 
is John, whom I beheaded ; he is risen from the dead." 

I fear the terror of that ghastly face upon the 
charger never entirely disappeared from the thoughts 
of the tetrarch. And for one reason I am led to pity 
him. At the climax of an evening's enjoyment he very 
thoughtlessly, but also very naturally, makes a very 



74 THE ART OF READING 

rash vow. And yet who would ever have thought of a 
maiden preferring the head of a man to the half of a 
kingdom? Herod must killJohn or break his vow. In 
either case he must violate his conscience. That is why 
I pity him. There is no way out of his dilemma but 
through the pangs of remorse. Herod should have 
chosen the lesser evil. But the apparent magnitude of 
evils depends upon the age, circumstances and moral 
training. 

To break such a vow of kingly honor, in those days 
was no shght offense. It is the dilemma of Jephtha 
repeated, and we know his choice and are without rec- 
ord of his remorse. What would seem the least evil to 
one man might seem the greater to another. What is 
least under one circumstance might under other condi- 
tions seem to the same man the greater. Thus it was 
with Herod. The killing of John was of concern to 
the purely subjective conscience, its motives a part of 
the mental constitution, constant with one through all 
time. The breaking of the vow was very largely of con- 
cern to the objective conscience, praise and blame, if 
you please, which is not yet become oneself. But 
that conscience was present with Herod in all its pos- 
sible force. He was feasting with the nobles of the 
realm. He possessed a manly wish to reward this ex- 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 75 

cellent entertainment of the damsel. He gave his vow 
before the glittering company of 

"The high captains and chief estates of GaKlee." 

Should he break it never more covdd he face a dignitary 
of the realm ; never again could he lift his eyes in coun- 
cil chamber; he would cringe consciously under the gaze 
of common subjects; never more could he expect the 
step-daughterly caresses of the damsel and forevermore 
might he expect the bitter reproach of Herodias. 
Hence, 

"For his oath's sake and their sakes which sat with 
him," 

he ordered John executed and the head brought in a 
charger to the damsel. 

Now could the objective conscience remain forever 
present in such force as to obliterate the dictates of the 
subjective, Herod would have escaped "the deep dam- 
nation of his taking off." But those forces are as fleet- 
ing as the effects of flattery, inconstant as caprice and 
disappear with the shifting of a scene, leaving the 
wretched soul a helpless victim to its true conscience in 
unavoidable meditation. 



76 THE ART OF READING 

Here, then, is a significant fact of conscience con- 
cerning the cause of our frequent disobedience. We 
are often under conditions whose mighty but fleeting in- 
fluence for an instant overpowers the perpetual but 
weaker moral dictate. There is the crai-ing of appe- 
tite ; there is convulsive rage or livid wrath ; there is all- 
absorbing vanity and pride; there is the overpowering 
eagerness of excited passion ; these and a thousand will- 
annulling impulses rise in a momentary power to which 
the categorical imperative is as nothing, and to whose 
motive the inward monitor must succumb. "Immedi- 
ate desires are in general strong, but of short duration, 
and can not be adequately represented to the mind after 
they have passed," wliile the conscience, though less 
violent, has a steady, continuous and everlasting action. 
Thus comes its rebuke and after repentance. Thus 
doth it rise to avenge the wrongs our impulses commit ; 
and thou mayst as well "flee thyself" as escape the tor- 
tures it will inflict. It is ever present and eternal as 
the mind. Its magic power seems to transform the ugli- 
ness of an evil deed into the likeness of a self-produced 
monster, as that of "Frankenstein," to pursue the per- 
petrator into the frigid regions of despair. Or it will 
throw him into the madness of the "ancient mariner" to 
hurry before him icy visions of sea-clad death. Or it 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 77 

will chase him in hopeless search for some comfort 
through the bleak regions of his barren soul, and at each 
turn he shall be frightened at the shadow of his own 
thoughts. Cursed aee the evil in heart for they 

SHALL SEE SaTAN. 

In the aflflicted soul the memory of evil done seems to 
obliterate all things else. The violated feelings seem to 
recoil from the presence of so much sanctity as rests in 
human creatures and the mind sinks "self withdrawn 
into a wondrous depth" where nothing seems real but the 
phantom of its own creation. There it endures the pro- 
bationary tortures of self-condemnation, gradually 
soothes away its embosomed pangs, nurses unto health 
its wounded conscience and re-ascends "through the 
troubled surface of crime to purity immovable," re-en- 
ters the affairs of daily life with subdued and deeper 
feelings with Charles Lamb's expression written in its 
feature, 

"EccoiR — This child has been in hell." 

But this is the conscience of the evil-doer for whom 
it will take the savor from his palate and the rest from 
his pillow for days and nights. 

We may obtain somewhat more beautiful concern- 
ing the conscience of the righteous. I do not much 



78 THE ART OF READING 

lament our lack of a great fear-harrowing phantom. 
I suspect we too much seek to frighten one another with 
what little imps we have, as unwise mothers do their 
children with "the black man." For the attempted ap- 
plication of this motive we are apt to borrow the reply 
of Euripides : "And shadows never scare me, thanks to 
hell." Our people are of a mettle not so much to be 
driven by the braggart as lured by the beauty. The 
dread of blame and desire of glory are but the below 
and above zero of the mercury of conscience ; as we shun 
the terrible blasts of winter, so we seek the brisk breezes 
of summer. They are but different states of the same 
feeling. Some mental physiologist says that the nerves 
in proportion to their capacity for pleasure are suscep- 
tible of pain. It is equally true that in proportion as 
the feelings are susceptible of pain, they are capacious 
for pleasure. Conscience is a goodly portion of hu- 
manity embosomed within us, and surrounding us; its 
censure or approval is as the frowns or smUes of a multi- 
tude. Its condemnation is the vented wrath of our 
ancestors, or their pity; its approval is their expressed 
satisfaction with our conduct. 

As much as we writhe under the one, so much do 
we rejoice under the other. The power of conscience 
to inflict with remorse is but equal to its power to visit 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 79 

with delight. We need not, therefore, concern our- 
selves altogether, with the imps of an "embosomed hell" 
as an incentive to duty, since we may as weU be enticed 
by the angels of an embosomed heaven. We may make 
the Zarathustrian judgment a daily experience, and as 
we turn from the repulsive ugly hag who is the creature 
of evil deeds, we may be lured, if we see aright, by the 
most beautiful of maidens who is our religion, that is, 
daily life, within ourselves. Aye, truly, "The breast of 
a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth." 
It will expand with the growth of grace; it wiU be em- 
blazoned by the ideal figures of the moral fancy, and 
unless an evil deed done in a weak moment conjures 
some John in the conscience to frighten away all beau- 
ties, thou wilt thus continue to "BuUd thee more stately 
mansions, O, my soul!" and feel within thee a peace 
above all earthly dignities, a stUl and quiet conscience. 

One word now concerning the relative importance 
of the subjective, and what I have called the objective, 
conscience. And that word may be given from Addi- 
son, "A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches 
of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of 
the world." However painful may be the latter for a 
time, they will leave no lasting scar upon the soiiL. 
Their eflPect may entirely disappear with the fading 



80 THE ART OF READING 

memory of a friend. The conscience proper, on the 
other hand, is a part of the soul, co-existent and co- 
eternal with it. It enters in the heart and is of man's 
own substance. Its presence is unavoidable. Its dic- 
tates never cease. We can not flee its vengeance. So 
binding is its law upon the soul, so terrible its inflictions 
and so enduring its force within us that it will at last 
teach all what Channing has told, "that it were better 
for a man to do a wrong act in obeying his own con- 
science than a right one in obeying mine." Let no man 
tliink to be guided by borrowed light. Best, however, 
that he do the right act in obejang his own. He should 
no more than consider himself fortunate if the light of 
his own soul and that of his friends falls for a time 
upon the same path. In the end he must walk alone, 
and will walk well only by keeping alive the celestial 
spark within his own breast. It seems as though I have 
heard someone say, man is but a i)rocess of becoming. 
The deeds of the present in their o-\vn image make the 
man of the future, and fitly picture the region of liis 
imagination with shadows of themselves. 

Let every soul 
Heed what it doth to-day, because to-morrow 
The same thing it shall find gone forward there 
To meet and make and judge it. 



ASSOCIATIONS 

A READING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF 
SOCIAL CONTACT 



ASSOCIATIONS 

TESTIS once told his disciples to search out the 
*^ worthy — an advice rendered fourfold emphatic by 
a knowledge of human adaptability. The child is molten 
sentiment poured into the mold of circimastance. 
There is a tap root of individuality, but the growth 
bends and twists and warps according to the light and 
shade, heat and cold, attractions and repulsions, by and 
through which it grows. What manner of man we be- 
come depends on what manner of mold we choose. 
Environment shapes us, but what our environment de- 
pends on where we place ourselves. Truisms c^-In 
company of the idle, we become indolent; — In the 
midst of vice, we become vicious; — ^Virtue transforms 
us to her ways ; — ^Activity calls up our energy, and the 
constant presence of noble industry awakens the highest 
and best of the sleeping powers of man. Society seeks, 
like water, a level ; frequently still more like water, the 
lowest level. Why should we flounder in the bog? 
Are not the lawns more pleasant? Heaven is nighest 
that spot where divinest creatures sport. We may have 
the keenest pleasure and glory of the highest and 

83 



84 THE ART OF READING 

sweetest activities of mortals, or become senseless heaps 
of creeping dust, according to whether or not we heed 
that advice from the Judean hills, to search who in the 
world is worthy. 

It is evidence of human dignity and worth that wor- 
ship is half -conscious honor of the qualities realized in 
our neighbors. We need the association of men who in 
verity may say, "I and divinity are one," and women 
under whose influence we feel the presence of the im- 
mortal. 

Let us receive our material from such as Carlj'le, who 
says of a hero all the good, and as little evil as possible. 
We win dwell under the greatest characteristic. From 
such as Carlyle and Emerson we have the advantage of 
a double force. We have Carlyle and his hero, we have 
Emerson and his representative man. We cannot come 
under tliis magnetism without feeling an increased buoy- 
ancy of spirit. And if we dwell long at once within the 
scope of this influence, we feel ourselves di'awn percep- 
tibly towards the Zenith of being. 

The inspiration gained from personal companion- 
ship comes with fresh charm. When this fountain 
flows, it is with the coolness of the springtime of joy. 
From our associates we can pick and choose always for 
our condition, but each word of kindness is an ounce of 



ASSOCIATIONS 85 

gold dropped into the treasury of life. How precious 
the hidden treasure thus revealed, yet how careless we, 
in the selection and mining of hearts. 

Companions inevitably buoy us up or bear us down, 
they will either strengthen or weaken our faith and de- 
termination, stifle or expand our hope, ennoble or abase 
our purposes. Thus we admonish ourselves to be of 
such intercourse with people as to awaken and 
strengthen their good desires. Dwell apart from 
thoughts of viciousness and vice. Gossip about good- 
ness. Entertain one another with the excellence of 
your neighbor. Tell me of only the noble character- 
istics of your acquaintance. I gain the double potency 
of his goodness and your affinity. But tell me of his 
faults, and I become cynic with thinking upon motes, 
and misanthropic under the weight of our combined de- 
pravity. I wish to grasp that man's hand from whose 
heart will flow a current of strength to my own, whose 
words upon my ears will have the rousing eff'ect of ma- 
• teHial drums. I wish to look into those eyes whose mild 
glance imparts the charm of virtue. Plant in your so- 
cial vineyards fruit bearing friends. 

As destiny lies in such associations more than our- 
selves, we will gain companions, "the very echo of whose 
footsteps sink upon the ear with the awe that belongs to 






I 



86 THE AUT OF READING 

spiritual phenomena," and the mention of whose names 
will send through the nerves a thrill of rapture. We 
will gather about us galaxes in the midst of which we 
may dwell in delight and wonder. We will search out 
the worthy, whom to be with is to be blest. We will 
dwell among gods and goddesses, for, under right com- 
panionship, humanity becomes "Incarnate Providence." 
Whichever way we glance in the circle of worthy asso- 
ciates we will meet 

Woman's fearless eye 
Lit by her deep love's truth, 

and of whatever friend we speak we may say. 

He IS a god to me. 



u 




WHEN WRITING " THE OKLAWAHA 



THE OCKLAWAHA— 

A READING OF ONE'S OWN TRAVELS 



THE OCKLAWAHA 

/'"XN the morning of the twenty-sixth of December, 
^-^ the sun rose as on most Florida mornings^ cast- 
ing bright smiles on the St. John's. The red children of 
nature caught this brilliancy from a sheet of water and 
called it Lake Astatula, meaning Lake of Sunbeams. 
Colonel H. L. Hart, who has navigated the Florida 
rivers for half a century, stood on the bank of the St. 
Johns a living example of the contagion of the climate, 
his face smiling hke the sim on the river. He caught 
the Indian inspiration and the heavy, narrow three 
decked boat which plies the Ocklawaha was called Asta- 
tulaj heavy, because it must meet floating logs cut from 
the swamp forests above ; narrow, because in the narrow 
channel closely lined with woods, it must turn a thou- 
sand short and narrow bends. 

At Palatka at eleven o'clock, we took our easy chairs 
on the middle front deck, and caressed by such a mild 
breeze as indicated the service of the palm forests, we 
were so enchanted by the soft, distant, scenery of the 
St. John's that at four-thirty in the afternoon we stiU 
rocked and gazed away, when suddenly our pUot made 

89 



90 THE ART OF READING 

an abrupt complete right-angle turn to the right and 
headed from the very center of the St. John's as if di- 
rect for the river bank ; but closer observation demonstra- 
ted it was for the mouth of a little narrow creek rushing 
out of the thick foliage and lined by heavy logs the cap- 
tain called :> — 

"THE OCKLAWAHA!" 

Still we sat transfixed with wonder, comfortable, 
close to the dark amber stream, sheltered by the upper 
deck from the crossing foliage, and charmed by all, to- 
gether with the music of the scraping branches on 
either side of the little steamer which steadily pushed 
its narrow way up ninety miles of winding woods and 
water. 

"Up the Ocklawaha!" Combination of catfish, alli- 
gators and turtles, garfish and eels, river and swamp, 
navigation and inaccessibility, stunted palmetto and tall 
cypress thickly hung with rough gray moss in triple 
strife for supremacy. The atmosphere and water pro- 
duce vegetation without soil. It swings in the one and 
floats on the other, while the soil shoots its fohage up 
through water to reach the air. Thus we here have 
the products of each singly and of the tliree elements 
water, air and soil, combined, aU in the conglomeration 
of chaotic strife- 



THE OCKLAWAHA 91 

The gravitation of this nature is the greatest inani- 
mate mystery. The water swells above itself to circle 
and caress the grove, the winds fondle the fohage and 
stoop to pat the liquid amber, and the trees bend over 
the water, but is it with the innate vanity of nature, to 
nod and gaze below at their reflected crests, or with na- 
ture's innate affection, to entwine their limbs in a rap- 
turous embrace across the chasm? 

Traversing the Ocklawaha one feels the ecstasy of 
heart under nature, the thraldom of nature over 
THE SOUL. Weird and wUd, a "brocken" scene, save the 
yells ! One feels an intense impulse to supply the lack 
and make hideous night howl with vdld and frantic 
shrieks, perhaps an inspiration from the million savage 
spirits that swarm the woods, for here Osceola fought, 
and here fell the fit human habitants of day and nature's 
danger, of night and nature's gloom. 

Great God ! Could any creature live ought but sav- 
age here! 

Civilization! Stay your crushing march! Spare 
this relic of primeval man-producing nature. 

Tradition! Yield your vain endeavor to trace the 
savage path across the Arctic Sea, and seek the womb 
of copper birth in these congested bowels of herbage. 

Night falls. The steamer lives, and puffs more con- 



92 THE ART OF READING 

stant, but like the whale, and plows its way into the 
darkness. 

We are steadily shoved towards a tunnel of gloom 
in the mountain of night. Each moment we feel we 
are about to drop with the river into this chasm of black- 
ness which must be its source and swallowed with it 
from day forever. 

The captain calls for light. Sparks and flashes 
spring from the upper deck. An immense cast iron 
open burner is with pitch-pine ablaze. 

This thick, black piece of nature, nothing else like 
it on the globe, this fragment of primeval art preser\'ed 
by God that men may see out of what he has brought 
the earth, now takes on a gray assure and grotesque 
terror; no longer thick woods springing out of water, 
and hung with a million trails of moss, it is a deep haunt, 
the margin only outlined, the recesses unsearchable, 
swarming with a million ghosts. 

Fire rains on the scene. A storm of sparks is flung 
over the treetops with every puff from the smokestack. 
In the rear they fall over the water hke a shower from 
the stars. As in the north, the chaste snowdrops pat 
the cool bosom of the frigid earth, so here a million 
kisses of torrid love are lapped on the water's frothing 
breast. 



THE OCKLAWAHA 93 

It is by a terrible shock of brain and heart, a contor- 
tion of muscles and logic, that we free ourselves from 
this gross under-life. Indeed we do not break the bond 
of common origin and a terrible blow falls upon our 
hope of immortality. With deep regret we remember 
opportunities that are lost, have an insane eagerness for 
joy, are sorry we did not marry in order to make this 
the scene of our honeymoon, and swear that never again 
shall a day pass without pleasure. 

This jungle of underbrush, this gross voluptuous 
verdure, this black heavy nature, is master and reduces 
me to her spirit. From this wildness I howl hyena-like 
to heaven, which answers with thunder. I seize the 
winds and fight the tempest. I vault the skies and rule 
the elements while earth rolls underneath. I look be- 
low ; forty feet under the surface I see the contented cat- 
fish in his liquid realm, without aspiration to foreign 
spheres above. I accept the lesson and am calm. Tur- 
bulency faints, and the soul sinks into a dream of the 
panorama of tliis wonderful scope of a hundred miles 
of bends and bushes, waters and woods, hawks and alli- 
gators, buzzards and buUfish, cranes and cats, swamp, 
jungle, day, night, sky, stars and earth's most graceful 
verdure, until we drift into a memory of Keats' descrip- 
tion of Poesy, and the soft spring of song, a dream of 
placid solitude. 



RIGHT THINKING 

"THE THOUGHT OF FOOLISHNESS IS SIN'' 

THE THOUGHT OF THE UPRIGHT IS 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 



RIGHT THINKING 

T MEAN not, thereby, correct reasoning from well- 
■*■ established premises the holding of true tenets, nor 
assent to the infallible, which is another way bigotry has 
of saying "my creed." 

I have no concern with the manner of thought, and 
with its matter only so far as it bears upon morals. 

In that element right-thinking is thinking oneself 
upward, as contrasted with wrong thinking, which is 
thinking ourselves downward. 

As man has thought himself out of savagery, so may 
he yet think himself into sainthood, 

Man has thought, invented, himself into dominion 
over the brute of the field, so may he now think him- 
self into mastery over the brute part of his own nature. 

Without this faculty of inventive thought, what were 
man that even a beast need be mindful of him! He 
were but a pigmy and as brutal as the giant brutality 
with which this thought alone has enabled him to cope. 
No creature of earth is more absolutely helpless at the 
time of its advent into life than is the two-legged mam- 
mal called Man. The instinct of all creatures else 

97 



98 THE ART OF READING 

serves them, from the moment of birth, for all purposes 
of self-preservation. But this babe-bundle of sensitive 
flesh must be unwound and developed by the process of 
many years. The hands practically grow into their 
proper functions. The chUd must be held on its swag- 
gering legs while it learns to walk; its eyes must be 
taught to determine objects and to measure space, the 
ears to distinguish sounds and the vocal organs to ar- 
ticulate them. The birth of the child is but the first 
of the seven stages to manhood. 

Man is no less an acquirement than a growth. The 
brute is sufficiently guided by instinct, because he has 
never risen above the level of his natural being. Our 
naturahsts have concluded that in so far as functions are 
primitive, instinct is a sufficient guide, but in so far as 
they are acquirements they are above the realm of this 
instinctive direction. The young brute possesses this 
ready strength and skiU, then, simply because he has be- 
come nothing above the brute. Instead, then, of being 
in any wise superior, his momentary action is the re- 
sult really of inferiority. Two faculties have lifted 
man above the instinctive guidance; one is the faculty 
of high and lofty desiring, the other of high and mighty 
acquirement. He can look upwards, see above any oc- 
cupied position and then he can climb upwards. In 



RIGHT THINKING 99 

one word, man is gifted with aspiration. He can con- 
stantly think himself into a higher state of being. He 
wages eternal warfare with nature, and what he is above 
the brute is the extent of his conquest. We have won 
clothing; we have won castles; we have won languages 
and government and society; we have won the beauty 
of floral gardens and human features, the family, the 
home, and the fire of the hearth. All art is nature con- 
quest, and much that we call nature bears the stamp of 
man's improving hand. Civilization is an accumula- 
tion of inventions ; steam and electricity and sUks, castles 
and paint, cardboard and print. Infant inferiority is 
of the body; adult superiority is of the brain. The 
faculty of inventive thought has lifted man above the 
beast and given him sway over the wilderness. Pit his 
physical strength against that of the lower animals and 
he is overcome. The gorilla wUl rend him in a moment. 
The beaver will outbuild him. The lion will outroar 
him. The deer outrun him. But man rises by the fac- 
ulty of invention, and with his musket brains the beast, 
with his cable sends his message across the ocean, and 
with his locomotive sweeps on with the wind. 

It is true that many other species of the kingdom 
come apace by ingenuity. Reynard says somewhere in 
fable that he visits the poultry yard by night in order 



100 THE ART OF READING 

not to disturb its owner. There is on record the bio- 
graphical episode of a dog which escaped being tied in 
his house every Sunday, by the exact computation of 
time that enabled him to leave home regularly every 
Saturday night and return on INIonday morning. 
James Freeman Clarke claimed the same faculty for 
his horse, which without guidance would, six days in the 
week, take the route to the Post Office, but on the sev- 
enth invariably, without ever having made a mistake, 
"bring up" at the church door. And "by the mass" I 
think he might have added that the horse displayed 
much greater reverence in that regard than many peo- 
ple. Let the peace sluggard go to the ant and learn 
the art of warfare, observe one tribe arrange and exe- 
cute a systematic attack upon the hill or fort of a neigh- 
bor tribe, drive off the occupants, carry away the eggs 
and out of them hatch a generation of slaves. Animal 
ingenuity is common. Professor Bain's statement goes 
without contradiction that "The brute creation performs 
the act of reasoning by the inductive method." That, 
however, will never invent. The lower kingdom can 
not deduce, and this faculty has given man implements 
for traversing a vast region which the brute can not as 
much as enter. This faculty transcends all physical 
strength and subdues every creature to its rule. It has 



RIGHT THINKING 101 

mastery over all things material. The lilliputian of body 
becomes the giant of mind, and this inventive spirit- 
ualism becomes the all-ruler of earth, and with its gun- 
powder and dynamite and multiplication of combustible 
explosives wiU, likely enough, yet blow out the physical 
universe and dwell in spirituality forever. 

These inventions are the tackling and thumbscrews 
and derricks and systems of leverage by which man has 
lifted himself out of barbarism. Inventive thought has 
brought the wild man out of the forest and tamed him. 
It has brought the cave dweller out of his dark den and 
housed him. It has brought the naked out of the jungle 
and clothed him. It has given to the still small voice 
the echoes of thunder, the slow-paced biped the speed 
of the winds, the empty handed it has armed and the 
powerless it has crowned and sceptered. 

Knowing these gigantic effects of the simple powers 
of reflective thought, we are certainly prepared to grant 
that a considerable diversity of character may be 
wrought by the different degrees to which this faculty 
is exercised by different individuals. It works all 
social distinctions. It pictures ideals to the imagina- 
tion and thus becomes a maker of morals. It colors all 
ideal creations with the hues of heaven, or streaks them 
with the black inks of the poisonous pit. It creates the 



102 THE AKT OF READING 

adornments for the temple of the soul. We sit con- 
stantly in the midst of its fancy picturings, and our 
hearts are fired with their beauty or fascinated under 
the spell of their deformity. 

There is the danger of thinking ourselves downward. 
We picture after the desires of the heart, and are liable 
enough to gather about us shadows caught from the 
lower regions which man has traveled. "The thought 
of foolishness is sin." We can not entertain a vile 
thought without being instantly degraded. Wrong 
thinking ushers man the wrong way. Vile imaginings 
are a blight to virtue ; they eat out the heart of purity and 
undermine the stablest foundations of character. They 
are like that rot in timber which begins at the core. 
They are the wood worm eating streaks of worthless- 
ness through the finest timbers. The force of an out- 
ward temptation is as the storm against the heart-de- 
cayed oak — after the first blast we see naught but the 
shattered ruins of a former man. This "poor flesh" of 
some Christian complainers bears a great deal of un- 
merited blame. The path of purity is followed or for- 
saken by the right or wrong ordering of thought. As 
is the fountain of thought, so will be the stream of life. 
"Cleanse thou the inside of the cup." 

Just as wise as Solomon when he said "The thought 



RIGHT THINKING 103 

of foolishness is sin" was David when he said "The 
thought of the upright is righteousness." 

It has constructed all moral systems. It strength- 
ens one's hold on life. Ideal picturings of the beauti- 
ful are the buoyant elements of man's disposition. 
They uplift and purify and enlarge. They are a safe- 
guard against temptation. They have won for us aU 
of heaven that we possess. They emblazon our lives 
with their beauty. They preserve to us our strength of 
moral faculty. Right thinking foreruns right doing. 
It is the parent of good deeds, the mother of virtue, the 
guardian angel of purity, the promoter of all good. 
"We can not entertain a good thought," says Emerson, 
"without being instantly made better." And "what 
thought can not win," says Francis E. Abbot, "is lost 
forever." But we may gather unto ourselves the gar- 
lands of grace; we may throw up before us unsur- 
mountable bulwarks of protection against vice ; we may 
establish ourselves upon a never crumbling rock of char- 
acter, and we may bring sweetest peace to our hearts, 
purify the inside of the cup of life, and with such images 
adorn the inner walls of the temple of soul that it shall 
be a fit habitation for angels and receive their visits by 
bearing ourselves in that presence which disturbs us— ^ 
with the joy of elevated thoughts. 



THE SAGES TO THE YOUTH 

A READING FROM THOSE OF GREAT ACCOMPLISH- 
MENT, AS TO THE BEARING OF THEIR ADVICE 
AND EXAMPLE ON YOUTH 



THE SAGES TO THE YOUTH 

T Ti may be learned from the Moslem records that an 
■'- Arab once turned his camel loose in the desert, say- 
ing to Mohammed that he trusted it to Providence, and 
received from the wise prophet this counsel: "Tie thy 
camel, then trust to Providence." 

All things are providentially constructed to follow 
the law of their being. Naught but the halter will fix 
the nomad. It is no trust, but lack of trust, which 
causes the action of man to belie his experience. In de- 
fiance of snow-slide and flood and wind, men may build 
populous cities at the foot of mountains, crowd them- 
selves unprotected into watery valleys, and rear their 
many-storied blocks upon the plains ; nevertheless, when 
the season comes God will Storm. 

Man knows it was the deceiver who said, "Of these 
stones mayest thou make bread." Make bread. It is 
a verbal variation, but the truth is that every son of 
God must labor for his living. Producers say that your 
hand to the plow is the means of provision. Who brings 
in the golden sheaves of harvest, previously went forth 
to sow. The waking songs of dawn warble the truth of 

107 



108 THE ART OF READING 

the old proverb that "God gives every bird its food, but 
does not throw it into the nest." 

"There is no king saved by the multitude of a host." 
Not food in the mouth, but its nutriment taken up by 
an active and eager system, is hfe. The indolent filler 
of his mouth is a miU with choked hopper and no steam. 
Man has no achievement of any sort but comes from 
his own power of work. The oppressed know this from 
birth. The oppressor learns it when he perceives that 
all chains with which he binds are forged out of his dis- 
position and his heart calloused to the hardness of an 
anvd. Attempt to open an unbought treasure-room 
of nature and you call a myriad of inflictions upon you. 
Her imps never sleep. We used to jest over a miser 
who, to recover a lost penny, sifted all the ashes from 
an old fireplace, but nature, to recover a mill, wiU smash 
a man. She is exact, precise, and stands upon her bond. 
Work is her currency, and its value to any man is pri- 
mary and intrinsic. "The gods sell everj-ihing good 
for labor," said the ancient Galen. "Work is the only 
universal currency which God accepts," echoed the 
modern Parker. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might," said the Hebrew preacher; and 
only yesterday Carlyle answered, "The latest gospel in 
this world is, know thy work and do it." It is the only. 



THE SAGES TO THE YOUTH 109 

contentment, it is the only attainment, it is the only 
blessedness, it is the only hfei 

Trust the law of recompense. Trust the law of ef- 
fort. "The battle is not to the strong alone, but to the 
active, the vigilant, the brave." "God is on the side of 
stronge battalions." "Trust in God and keep your 
powder dry." "Fear God and take your own part." 
"God helps them who help themselves." "Tie thy 
camel, then trust to Providence." Thus strikes upon 
the ear of modern youth the mingled chorus of the ages, 
prophet, warrior, statesman, literati. Let it sink into 
his heart as conviction that man is divinely appointed to 
struggle and God-endowed with capacity to win. 
Youth should be impressed with the wisdom of the 
child's answer to the question as to who made him: 
"God made me about so long, I growed the rest of the 
way." Never unteach that child that lesson, and in 
maturity he wUl be an intellectual and moral giant. In- 
stead of ivy, he will be oak, not creeping insignificantly 
on the lowest stratum of human existence nor twining to 
the strong for support, but a great character deep- 
rooted in purpose and wUl, sending majestically to- 
ward heaven its might of righteousness, vdth its spread- 
ing love and sympathy. The success of heroes of aU 
orders and the records of every people combine to con- 



110 THE ART OF READING 

Tince us that what we desire we must gain, and that 
what we would be we must become. Strength is a de- 
velopment; virtue is an attainment; love is a cultiva- 
tion; sympathy is a growth; justice is a product of so- 
cial forces. There is no high and holy attribute of man 
but blossoms from a sentiment whose root is down in 
human hunger, and its growth up through the strife of 
passion. Every plant of life whose bloom is beauty has 
been watered from the fountain of sorrows. Let wis- 
dom be the overseer, determination and self -poise the 
gardeners for our cultivation, and the whole pathway of 
hfe may be adorned with the sweet alyssum of worth 
and the amaryllis of splendid beauty. The geraniimi 
of disappointed expectation will be plucked out of the 
heart, and the almond of sympathy and the balm of 
hope planted in its place. The dead leaves of sadness 
wUl be swept away, and among the sweet-scented clover 
of industry will spring up the corianders of merit ; and 
under the shade of the dock of patience will grow the 
pansies of thought; and together with white pinks of 
purity, violets of modesty and the rue and hyssup of 
love, will flower the honeysuckle of devoted affection 
with all the fuU-blown roses of attraction, the damask of 
freslmess, the china of grace and the rose-austrian of 
"all that is lovely." The fragrance of life will be as 



THE SAGES TO THE YOUTH 111 

aidenn-caught perfumes of sweetness, and its music as 
the calling carols of the golden world. O youth, if you 
have fabulously lost one paradise which you could not 
enjoy, you may really make yourself another paradise 
which you can enjoy. But be not self -deluded in petty 
dissatisfaction lamenting a free paradise as a condition 
of the past, nor, disappointed, dreaming of it as a pos- 
sible condition of the future. Keep the counsel of the 
sages. 

Xerxes refused to eat Attic figs tiU he had con- 
quered the country that produced them. The old King 
exemplified the soul of humanity, which can not taste 
the fruit of any reahn it has not mastered. 

It is said of Alexander that he wept over the vic- 
tories of his father, lest all the world should be con- 
quered ere his time came to rule. When told that his 
father conquered but to bequeath to him, he answered: 
"What good will it do me if I possess much and do noth- 
ing?" And the heart to-day, made wise by twenty cen- 
turies of human experience, must assent that he could 
enjoy nothing which he had not squarely and bravely 
earned. 

"Not what I have, but what I do, is my joy," is the 
modern word also. Felicity unearned is practically, 
impossible. Price constitutes the worth with nature. 



112 THE ART OF READING 

Begged happiness is a contradiction; stolen joy a para- 
dox. Pleasure earned is alone uncompromised. 
"What we become determines what we shall have." 

What a truism has become the poverty of the in- 
dulgent wealthy, simply because, grown up in idle de- 
pendence, they lack manhood to meet misfortune. The 
energy and will needed to bear one through the hard, 
apparently heartless, struggle of life, must be engen- 
dered from the cradle. The achiever of ends, the ac- 
comphsher of purposes, the winner of hopes, must treas- 
ure up, in nerve and fiber, that priceless proverb picked 
from the commonplace fields of his grandfather's toil, 
"Hoe your own row." Become worthy, and your worth 
will be recognized. Goodness, as murder, will out. 
All success testifies that the method of ascent is Baby- 
lonish. The heart elevates itself on a slowly and la- 
boriously built tower of personal deeds. It ascends on 
golden stairs self-made of individual actions. And 
from its loft, answers himianity asking for the pearls 
of life, answers the answer of Lytton: "Labor continu- 
ously and judiciously applied becomes genius"; answers 
the answer of Disraeh: "The secret of success is con- 
stancy to purpose"; answers the answer of Spurgeon: 
"Many men owe the grandeur of their hves to their tre- 
mendous difficulties"; the answer of Sumner: "No hon- 



THE SAGES TO THE YOUTH 113 

est, earnest effort in a good cause can fail" ; the answer 
of Everett: "Perfection is never an accident"; of 
Franklin: "No gains without pains." 

Heaven is not reached in a single bound, 
But we build the ladder by which we rise, 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies. 
And we mount to its summit round by round. 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 

A READING OF GENERAL PERSONAL WORTH 
IN LITE 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 

iy /I" Y readers, I think, will assent that the harsh 
■^ ■*■ treatment of "good dog Tray" for the misfor- 
tune of falling in with bad company, possessed a degree 
of severity beyond justice. Yet you may be inclined to 
accept the warning moral, and among whatever people 
you enter inquire out who is worthy. So it may seem 
I should have done well to inquire about the worthiness 
of the word "aristocracy," before thrusting into its com- 
pany "justifiable." So, indeed, I did, and discovered 
the term to be old Tray suffering disrespect for past as- 
sociations. How amiable is it in man to subdue prej- 
udice, and how worthy in mortal to rescue any unfor- 
tunate prodigal from the fangs of fiendish associates! 
Come, therefore, let us be governed by the spirit of the 
father toward his son, and go out and weepingly fall 
upon the neck of this old Tray, and sacrifice the too 
well-fatted calf of "man's equality" to this husk-fed 
prodigal of aristocracy. 

We may satisfy our moral sensibilities with the hope 
that the retribution of social banishment has restored his 
former gravity of character. 

That aristocracy merits this metaphor is seen from 

IIT 



118 THE ART OF READING 

its ancient lineage — its father, Aristos, and its mother, 
Krates — "The Rule of the Best." But the son has cer- 
tainly dishonored his parentage. The term was misap- 
plied, and the earliest aristocracy was that of power. 
Position made the man. The distinction was between 
senators and plebeians, the rulers and the ruled. 
Power cast about the person a bright halo. It was an 
attribute of God, and gave the individual the respect due 
to deity. The hero was formally worshiped. In 
the god-making period of hmnan development the deifi- 
cation of kings was well nigh imiversal. I believe it 
is Bacon who records that a Roman emperor when told 
he was dying replied: "I suppose I am now become 
a divinity." Power was thought to be divine. And, 
indeed, the intrinsic power of virtue is divine. But the 
absence of virtue detracted nothing from the ancient 
crown's sacredness. Power was the attribute wor- 
shiped. "The King's will be done," says the barbarian 
awaiting execution of the king's sentence of death. 
And with barbarism in broadcloth it is any way and 
means to position. 

Such is political aristocracy — a social evil quite un- 
justifiable. A modern-time associate disrespectful. 
Good people and wise are not tempted into its com- 
pany. 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 119 

Closely allied with this is the aristocracy of wealth. 
Wealth commands position. Here also superiority is 
alone in power. Money buys authority. Wealth lav- 
ished upon a feast for the people in the farce Republic 
of Rome secured political preferment. Money and flat- 
tery, combined with bluffism and party prejudice, se- 
cure the preferment in our own republic — which is to 
just that extent a farce. But this is dwelling upon the 
evil of aristocracy; its unjustifiable phase; and my an- 
nouncement-introductory was for that which is justifi- 
able. 

We hear the deep under-crust rumbhngs of accom- 
plishing revolution beneath every universal interest. 
Revolutions intellectual and religious, revolutions moral 
and social. Mark, with me, the unseen forces working 
through society in such a way as is gradually estabhsh- 
ing the justifiable aristocracy. We know that in the 
condition of castes, whether constituted by priestcraft, 
statecraft or wealth, the circumstances of one's birth 
had an irresistible influence on the whole life. Poverty, 
wealth, insignificance, greatness, were alike — heredi- 
tary. Children were bound to the condition and stand- 
ing of their parents. Many exceptions to the rule arose 
certainly. For native genius, human artifice becomes 
nothing, and character with determination often placed 



120 THE ART OF READING 

one high above the heads of all graded nobles. Besides, 
indolence and luxury soon undermine the physical and 
mental constitution, so that after a while these leisurely 
castes necessarily fail. And industrial activity 
strengthens both body and mind, so that inevitably the 
laboring people become superior. Such a transforma- 
tion constantly transpires. As witness to that fact we 
need but recall the brilliant constellation of heroes that 
glittered just at the daybreak of our nation, rose out 
of this darkness of obscure life, and that the historian 
of our present period has but to chronicle the nobihty of 
self-made «ien and women. 

Note in any American city the proportion of its suc- 
cessful men who were farm-born and bred or came out 
from other avenues of physical labor. And the fact 
that they are self-made trumpet-tongues us the truth 
that we have passed the time of birth's supreme influence 
on social standing, intellectual attainment and natural 
preferment, and entered the age of the justifiable aris- 
tocracy where the standing of people is self-determined 
by industry and by character. 

Now you cogitate as to why intellectual accomplish- 
ment does not figure in the characteristics of tliis new 
aristocracy; but consider that education is but an aid to 
character and by no means indispensable. The mental 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 121 

essential, which is intelligence, underlies industry and 
morals. Furthermore, it depends entirely upon the 
use of education whether it contributes to the power of 
righteousness or to the power of villains. Wisdom, or 
the knowledge of life, may be had without "learning." 
The Chinese government furnishes us an example of the 
aristocracy of education. Its offices are filled by suc- 
cessful competitors in an intellectual examination. The 
Chinese, however, furnish us no superior, social or indi- 
vidual character. The feature that renders such an aris- 
tocracy unjustifiable is the unequality of educational 
advantages. A race with an uneven start is called 
unfair. Furthermore, the marks of excellence and de- 
grees of superiority are arbitrarily determined, which 
can not be in any just arrangement whatsoever. In- 
dustry must underlie education, which, when acquired, 
may be wisely made a means of good character; buli 
under the new conditions character must determine so- 
cial standing. Good character the idle never possess. 
They are not awake to the duties of life. They have 
learned of no obligation. They do not understand the 
rights of others, else they would not be idle. Laziness 
canjiot impose itself on energy. Self-preservation is 
the first motive of action, and the outcome of one's in- 
dustry should be one's sustenance. Man should always 



M 




122 THE ART OF READING 

be at par — never fail to be worth himself. The frxiits 
of existence should pay for its privilege. Man should 
lay hold of only that to which his labor entitles him, ap- 
propriate nothing his activity has not earned, enjoy that 
only wliich he has rightly, with labor, paid for. 

Idleness was the pride of the old aristocracy, labor is 
the pride of the new. The old was an order of thieves 
subsisting upon the toil of those they were able, by law, 
to rob. The new is an order of the conscientious, indus- 
trious, wishing nothing they do not deserve, but de- 
manding what they have earned. They are of the right 
mind of the sage who said, "If any will not work neither 
should he eat," or of the toiler who said to another 
sage, "O, priest, I both plow and sow, and having 
plowed and sown, I eat. You also, O, priest, should 
plow and sow, and having plowed and sown, you should 
eat." 

Even the liidden equities of physical being proclaim 
that "we have not a sinew whose law of strength is not 
action," and that "we have no faculty whose law of im- 
provement is not use." But the higher we ascend into 
nature the more stringent are nature's demands. No 
person can feed on happiness unbought. To him that 
wanteth understanding is it said that "stolen waters are 
sweet." Dip from your own cistern and draw from 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 123 

your own well any element of unalloyed happiness you 
ever expect to enjoy. We can not go beyond our own 
creative faculties for the benefits and joy afforded hu- 
man creatures. No thief can enter the soul and steal 
away treasures of heaven. Nothing can be depended 
on but principle, and until we toil the reward of work 
shall not be ours. In material elements one may feed 
on what others reap, but in Elysian fields, "he who 
wastes the seed time will want the harvest." Duty 
does not end with full-garnered material means for self- 
ish living. People who are at all sjntnpathetic must 
work, and conscientious people will work, while a hu- 
man need is unsupplied, while a single sigh is heard, 
while a heart aches, while one character is imperfect — 
which we may be assured is while the human family sur- 
vives, for growth has no limits; labor is consequently 
eternal. Under our latter-day wisdom by our new so- 
cial conditions, in the light of truth and spirit of sin- 
cerity, we must earnestly protest against that insolent 
pride which scorns work, and repudiate without hesi- 
tancy or equivocation any traditional cause for things 
which by figuring labor as a punishment for disobe- 
dience to God reflects dishonor upon the sweat of man's 
brow. Idleness and indolence were never under divine 
sanction. Animals and humans who did not from the 



124 THE ART OF READING 

III first comply with nature's imperative demand for work 

were cursed with physical death. Labor is the law of 
life. It governs the first elements of existence. Bite 
not your thumb at "work." It is unparalleled in dig- 
nity. Cast no reproach upon that which is the only, 
and the sure and safe way, to aU there is attainable in 
life worth attaining. 

Once lazy, man is inevitably a thief, for it is truly 
said that "We must aU work or steal, howsoever we 
name our stealing." By whatsoever, then, the up- 
right is above the thief, by so much is labor above idle- 

H ness. 

The tables are turned, and industry now carries the 
dignified head. Thus is accomplished the natural selec- 
tion of the worthy. Labor will not associate with idle- 
ness. It never has time. Toil is always occupied — 
never at home to indolence. The only way to enter the 
society of the industrious is through work. The badge 
of labor, in some one of its forms — the patch upon the 
pantaloons, the bead of sweat upon the face, the knit 
brow of thought — must be worn by him who enters the 
ennobling circle of this justifiable aristocracy. 

Tarry a little. Shall this man enter, though he 
wear the badge of labor, whose vice has glassed his eye, 
whose sin has lined his cheek with mean expression, on 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 125 

whose forehead is written "Fool! fool!" and with the 
mark of the beast on the back of his head? 

As weU ask if repellant poles will attract, or if oil 
and water "mix." The order of this nobility combines 
industry and morals. Its laws say that labor and 
righteousness are inseparably connected ; that not alone 
is idleness the mint where mischief is coined, but idle- 
ness is, per se, a wrong. No poet has, I think, said of 
labor, as of cleanliness, that it is next to godliness, and 
that leaves us free to say that labor is a part of right- 
eousness. Assure me that a man works and you as- 
sure me that he possesses one essential of good char- 
acter; and assure me of a man's good character and you 
assure me that in some field of life that man labors. 
Every one betrays society who does not accomplish the 
full promise of his full physical, mental and moral 
strength. His rental debt for an earthly mansion of 
God's house is impaid while yet he sees undone a right- 
eous thing he is able to do. Nature demands return for 
the strength she gives us. Passive righteousness is 
negative wrong. 

Character alone might admit one to this nobility 
were its attainment possible without energy; but it is a 
mistake to think that man is "taken up" in morals. 
One must always "go up." The development of char- 



126 THE AKT OF READING 

acter is by self effort. Man must, Jacob-like, wrestle 
his cause out with divinity single-handed, alone — and in 
the darkness, for light never comes tUl the contest is 
ended. We enter or are excluded at this door not by 
the actions of others; our hearts are enriched or im- 
poverished by what we do. As the poet says : 

There are some deeds so grand 
That their mighty doers stand 
Ennobled, in a moment more than kings. 

There was a time in the infancy of industry when 
all articles were "home-made." None but the shoe- 
maker wore shoes; a coat was its wearer's work. He 
who plowed and sowed did eat. Such conditions of- 
fered no hope to the shirk. The reward of indolence 
was cold and hunger and death. The IMohammedans 
boast that their prophet was a cobbler and cloak mender. 
Many Christians profess a pride in the fact that 
Jesus was a carpenter. Each prophet went mantled 
in his own moral dignity. From the fibers of the heart 
is spun the adorning dress. It matters nothing to our 
character whether or not others produce. We live at 
home, and there are as many mansions in the heavenly 
house as there are individuals under heaven's dome. 
We can freely inhabit none but self -constructed castles. 



JUSTIFIABLE ARISTOCRACY 127 

Character has never been made by other than its posses- 
sor. The moral robe is invariably its wearer's fash- 
ioning, and reveals the divinity or monstrosity of his 
taste. Character is home-spun. You can not exhibit 
the spirit of man in borrowed robes. There is no 
masque that will secure incarnate Satan a seat in the cir- 
cles of the justifiable aristocracy. Brutal arms can not 
break through the invisible walls of man's repulsion and 
attraction. The activity of industry must seciu-e to it- 
self the strength of character. True it is that this aris- 
tocracy, just as the old, is sustained and sustainable only 
by force— but it is by the force of character. "In 
seraph or archangel we can conceive no higher power 
than virtue." It is the great magic dissolver of ma- 
terial walls and artificial supports. 

Man should understand that always and everywhere 
sin is death and wicked means are self-defeating. Just 
self-respect can alone gain the respect of others, and the 
man of meekness, patience, long-suffering and forbear- 
ance possesses a hiunaneness totally repelled by any 
thought of the battle-ax and blood; and society's mini- 
mum of the bestial finds itself shut out from the associ- 
ation, and well-nigh from the sympathy of its maximum 
of the humane. The vicious method should heed Chan- 
ning's gospel, that 



128 THE ART OF READING 

"To do wrong is more pernicious than to suffer all the 
calamities human malice can heap upon us." 

Society should order itself by the natural adjust- 
ment of peaceful means. In proportion as such 
methods are inaugurated, righteousness becomes upper- 
most, labor receives its due, character becomes supreme, 
virtue is the ruling power, and the justifiable aristocracy 
established. From it no worthy person can be ex- 
cluded. That one who labors, joins the nobility of the 
laboring order; that one who cultivates character, enters 
the aristocracy of the virtuous, and the pure in heart 
grasp the presence of the Divine Kingdom. 



THE END 



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